OPM director Katherine Archuleta told the Senate and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that stolen passwords for a federal contractor were used by hackers in the two cyberattacks targeting federal employee data.
Idan Tendler, head of Fortscale and a former agent of the 8200, Israel’s cyberwarfare specialist group, told TechTarget:
It’s really no surprise that the OPM breach was traced back to a compromised credential as this is the case in nearly 80% of the breaches we have seen, including Target and Anthem. Compromised users continue to create great challenges for security teams. With legitimate access, it is difficult to detect whether an employee’s actions are actually being perpetrated by that employee or by an outside source.