US NAVY Sailor Data Hacked

So, who would have thought there would be two stories about the US Navy in less than a week on this site? (Not me anyway!)

In the same week that the US Navy has had to defend itself against claims of Piracy (Software Piracy) it is now also finding itself investigating how the personal data of more than 130, 000 Navy personnel was “compromised.”

According to the NavyTimes.com website, the personal data came from the “Career Waypoints database, known as C-WAY, which sailors use to submit re-enlistment and Navy Occupational Specialty requests.” 

The Navy was first informed of the data breach on October 27^th by Hewlett Packard Enterprise Services (HPES). The data stolen included names and social security numbers, but at the time of writing, the Navy does not believe the information has been misused, adding that “unknown individuals” were responsible for accessing sensitive information on both current and former sailors.

Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Admiral Robert Burke said:

“The Navy takes this incident extremely seriously- this is a matter of trust for our Sailors. We are in the early stages of investigating and are working quickly to identify and take care of those affected by this breach.”

This is the second known major cyber security breach of US Navy data in recent times directly linked to contracting activities with Hewlett Packard. The Navy were forced to admit back in 2013 that hackers from inside Iran had gained access to the unclassified Navy and Marine Corps intranet.

The current ongoing Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS: The real one, not the one on TV) has so far found that 134, 386 sailors’ data had been accessed by the unknown hackers.

A spokesperson for Hewlett Packard Enterprise said:

“This event has been reported to the Navy and because this is an ongoing investigation, HPE will not be commenting further out of respect for the privacy of our Navy personnel.”

Overall, it’s not been a good week for the US Navy news wise. As well as being accused of software piracy, and now having to admit a data security breach earlier this week, the most expensive destroyer ever built for the US Navy broke down in the Panama canal, and had to be towed…

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