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The breach hit systems for processing TRANServe transit benefits
that reimburse government employees for some commuting costs. It was
not clear if any of the personal information had been used for
criminal purposes.
USDOT notified Congress Friday in an email seen by Reuters that its
initial investigation of the data breach has "isolated the breach to
certain systems at the department used for administrative functions,
such as employee transit benefits processing."
USDOT said in a statement to Reuters the breach did not affect any
transportation safety systems. It did not say who might be
responsible for the hack.
The department is investigating the breach and has frozen access to
the transit benefit system until it has been secured and restored,
it said.
The maximum benefit allowance is $280 per month for federal employee
mass transit commuting costs. The breach impacted 114,000 current
employees and 123,000 former employees.
Federal employees and agencies have been target of hackers in the
past.
Two breaches at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in
2014 and 2015 compromised sensitive data belonging to more than 22
million people, including 4.2 million current and federal employees
along with fingerprint data of 5.6 million of those individuals.
Suspected Russian hackers who used SolarWinds and Microsoft software
to burrow into U.S. federal agencies breached unclassified Justice
Department networks and read emails at the Treasury, Commerce and
Homeland Security departments. Nine federal agencies were breached,
Reuters reported in 2021.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chris Reese, Cynthia
Osterman and Diane Craft)
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