Pentagon reveals cyber breach of travel records

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon on Friday said there has been a cyber breach of Defense Department travel records that compromised the personal information and credit card data of U.S. military and civilian personnel.

According to a U.S. official familiar with the matter, the breach could have affected as many as 30,000 workers, but that number may grow as the investigation continues. The breach could have happened some months ago but was only recently discovered.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the breach is under investigation, said that no classified information was compromised.

According to a Pentagon statement, a department cyber team informed leaders about the breach on Oct. 4.

Lt. Col. Joseph Buccino, a Pentagon spokesman, said the department is still gathering information on the size and scope of the hack and who did it.

Disclosure of the breach comes on the heels of a federal report released Tuesday that concluded that military weapons programs are vulnerable to cyberattacks and the Pentagon has been slow to protect the systems. And it mirrors a number of other breaches that have hit federal government agencies in recent years, exposing health data, personal information, and social security numbers.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office in its Tuesday report said the Pentagon has worked to ensure its networks are secure, but only recently began to focus more on its weapons systems security. The audit, conducted between September 2017 and October 2018, found that there are “mounting challenges in protecting its weapons systems from increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.” The Defense Department has consistently said that its networks and systems are probed and attacked thousands of times a day.