Additional Fingerprints Stolen During OPM Breach; Revised Total Reaches 5.6 Million

As if the breach of the federal government’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) wasn’t overwhelming enough, it has now been disclosed that an additional 4.5 million fingerprints were stolen. This is in addition to the 1.1 million that was already reported at the time of the incident. Officials think that they may be used by a foreign government to identify intelligence agents.

In the meantime, if you are a federal employee and you know your information was taken as part of this:

• Continue watching your credit reports and payment card charges

• Report anything that is strange to the appropriate organization. Do this right away. The sooner fraud is identified, the easier and less expensive it is to manage it.

• If you are or were a federal employee, but not notified, it is a good idea to also monitor these things.

Every person with credit in the United States has a right to one free credit report each year from each of the three major bureaus: Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian. There is a single government approved website where they can be ordered; annualcreditreport.com. However, there are many companies who will provide the reports as well. Make sure to read the fine print and don’t feel obligated to purchase additional services or pay any fees or charges. You can also go directly to the credit bureau websites individually. But again, watch for upsells.

Jim Stickley of Stickley on Security recommends staggering the ordering. Get one every four months to keep a better eye on potential fraud.

As for those stolen fingerprints, these days prints are used to unlock phones which contain a wealth of sensitive data, make purchases on various apps, transfer money on mobile devices, verify identity for healthcare purposes, and enter through immigration when arriving in the United States among many other things. So damage can indeed be done. In the future, biometrics are likely to be used even more. However, it is believed at this time that a picture of a fingerprint has limited use without the actual finger. Although a scan of a fingerprint taken from a photo has been used in an iPhone scanner successfully.

Future technologies are likely to require more proof that the print being used is indeed attached to a live finger or that a facial recognition scan is a live face that can blink, for example, and not a photo. The technology is already getting to this point. It just isn’t quite there, so we will have to be patient.

But the limited uses at this time are likely why officials are playing down the OPM fingerprint theft. They announced that an interagency working group will be looking into possible ways to misuse them now and in the future. Should additional ways be determined, those affected will be notified.