One DoD contractor's laptop compromised the identity of over 130k Navy sailors

(8/28/2013) Capt. Bruce Deshotel, head enlisted community manager, discusses the Career Navigator initiative with senior leadership at Naval Station Norfolk. The program, implemented June 3, 2013 created new policies about re-enlistment and replaced the Navy's Perform to Serve (PTS) re-enlistment approval. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Andrew Schneider/Released)

U.S. Navy is warning more than 130,000 sailors of a data breach but there is not a large scale hacking to report.

The breach occurred when the laptop of a Navy contractor from Hewlett Packard was compromised.

According to the WSJ, the Navy learned of the incident on Oct. 27 and determined on Tuesday that names and Social Security numbers of 134,386 current and former sailors were accessed by “unknown individuals,” the Navy said Wednesday in a statement.

“We are in the early stages of investigating and are working quickly to identify and take care of those affected by this breach,” the Navy said.
The Navy said it will notify the affected sailors over the next weeks via telephone, letter and email as well as considering options for credit monitoring service.

“The Navy takes this incident extremely seriously — this is a matter of trust for our sailors,” said Navy personnel boss Vice Adm. Robert Burke in a statement. “We are in the early stages of investigating and are working quickly to identify and take care of those affected by this breach.”

A Navy official familiar with the investigation said the personal data came from the Career Waypoints database (known as C-WAY) which sailors use to submit re-enlistment and requests to change Navy Occupational Specialties, according to Navy Times.

In March 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported the sloppily written contract with Hewlett Packard didn’t require HP to provide security for some of the Navy’s unclassified databases.

The investigation being conducted by NCIS is in its early stages but a press release claims it hasn’t found any malicious use of the data yet.

Wall Street Journal reports HP Enterprise didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

All rights reserved. The content of this webpage may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written consent of Bright Mountain Media, Inc. which may be contacted at info@brightmountainmedia.com, ticker BMTM.

Post navigation