An investigation into a data breach of health records has indicated that 17 members of the House of Representatives, along with 585 congressional staffers, have been affected, Axios reported.
The revelation comes ahead of Mila Kofman, executive director of D.C. Health Link, testifying before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday. The breach, which occurred last month, prompted both Congress and the insurance marketplace to conduct investigations into the matter, with the scope of the incident being a primary concern.
Kofman's testimony will reveal that a misconfigured cloud server paved the way for malicious actors to steal thousands of customers' data, including their names, birth dates, and Social Security numbers. In total, 56,415 current and past customers of the health insurance exchange were affected. Kofman's written testimony also highlighted that 43 family members of House lawmakers and 231 dependents of House staff members were also among those affected.
The breach occurred due to a mistake — a misconfigured cloud server, Kofman says. About two-thirds of exposed cloud storage buckets contained sensitive data, according to a report by Palo Alto Networks. However, Kofman believes the misconfiguration was not intentional, but instead the result of human error.
Kofman's figures regarding the breach are lower than those previously disclosed by congressional aides to the media in the weeks leading up to Wednesday's hearing. D.C. Health Link enlisted the help of the FBI and Google-owned cybersecurity firm Mandiant on March 6, the same day it learned of the breach. By March 8, Mandiant had traced the source of the breach, and D.C. Health Link's security manager was able to shut it down immediately.
Following the breach, D.C. Health Link notified six other federal agencies, as well as three local D.C. chambers of commerce, whose members enrolled in health insurance through the exchange. This incident marks the latest organization to be affected by a breach due to a misconfigured cloud server.
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