Data breach at USDA effects 26,000 federal employees

Jim at GuardMyCreditFile has this report.

…the USDA was forced to announce last week that as many as 26,000 employees and contractors may have had their data accessed and stolen by hackers. The announcement is just another in a string of recent data breach embarrassments involving government databases.

This particular incident was discovered by IT workers at the Department of Agriculture on June 5th. The data contained in the database included names, Social Security Numbers, photographs and worksite information for roughly 26,000 people. All of the people exposed in the breach were either employees or private contractors to the Department in the Washington, DC area.