5.6 million

THE NUMBER OF US OFFICIALS’ IDENTITIES REVEALED IN HACK.

If your passwords or bank account numbers are stolen by cyber criminals it can be a considerable ordeal to change them, but if hackers manage to nab unchangeable biometric identi ers like ngerprints, you’ve got a much bigger problem. ough the hack on the US O ce of Personnel Management — responsible for the nation’s database of government o cials and civil servants — has been widely reported on since June, in September the agency con rmed that the hack was even worse than expected, with records of over 5.6 million employee ngerprints among the data stolen, including many from individuals with intelligence or military security-clearances.