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 Katherine Archuleta, director of the Office of Personnel Management,
said problems exposed by the cyber attacks discovered in April and
linked by U.S. officials to China were "decades in the making."
Although she said her agency thwarts hackers 10 million times per
month, members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government
Affairs insisted that the successful hacks showed data security
could not have been a priority for the OPM.
Some suggested that top officials resign.
"You failed. You failed utterly and totally," said Republican
Representative Jason Chaffetz, the committee's chairman.
U.S. officials have said they suspect China, but the administration
has not yet publicly accused Beijing.
China denies any involvement in hacking U.S. databases.
Tuesday's congressional hearing was the first since U.S. officials
announced early this month that hackers had broken into OPM
computers and the data of 4 million current and former federal
employees had been compromised.
Since then, they revealed another security breach that put at risk
the personal information and intimate details of many millions more
Americans - and their relatives and friends - who had applied for
security clearances.
NEW DEFENSES BREACHED
Archuleta said the two breaches were discovered and contained
because of new security measures taken in the last year. The attacks
occurred before the measures were fully implemented.
"I want to emphasize that cyber security issues that the Government
is facing is a problem that has been decades in the making, due to a
lack of investment in federal IT systems and a lack of efforts in
both the public and private sectors to secure our internet
infrastructure," she said.
Archuleta, who was appointed to head the agency two years ago, said
4.2 million employees were affected by the first OPM hack. Even more
had been affected in the other attack, she said, but would not
provide an estimate.
She also declined, despite repeated questions, to say how many
years' records had been compromised.
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The committee's top Democrat, Elijah Cummings, said he was concerned
about how many people were affected, what the government was doing
to help them and what foreign governments could do with their
information.
But he said details of the investigation should not be made public:
"A lot of the information about the attack is classified and the
last thing we want to do is give our enemies information."
Archuleta, OPM Chief Information Officer Donna Seymour, Homeland
Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and other administration officials
held a classified briefing on the cyber attacks for lawmakers later
on Tuesday.
Suggestions of Chinese involvement could further strain ties between
Washington and Beijing, which are holding an annual "Strategic and
Economic Dialogue" in Washington next week involving senior
government officials.
Lawmakers expressed frustration at the refusal of Archuleta and
other administration officials at the hearing to answer many
questions, frequently justifying their silence by saying they could
not discuss classified information.
"I am gonna know less coming out of this hearing than I knew coming
in," said Democratic Representative Stephen Lynch. "You're doing a
great job stonewalling us, but hackers, not so much."
(Editing by David Storey, Lisa Shumaker and Grant McCool)
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