A computer hacker got into the US agency that guards the country's nuclear weapons stockpile and stole the personal records of at least 1,500 employees and contractors, a senior US lawmaker said yesterday.
The target of the hacker, the National Nuclear Safety Administration, is the latest agency to reveal that sensitive private information about government workers was stolen.
The incident happened last September but top Energy Department officials were not told about it until this week, prompting the chairman of the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee to demand the resignation of the head of the NNSA.
An NNSA spokesman was not available for comment. The NNSA is a semi-autonomous arm of the Energy Department and also guards some of the U.S. military's nuclear secrets and responds to global nuclear and radiological emergencies.
Earlier this week the Pentagon revealed that personal information on about 2.2 million active-duty, National Guard and Reserve troops was stolen last month from a government employee's house. That comes on top of the theft of data on 26.5 million US military veterans, the Department of Veterans Affairs has said.