The Congressional Research Service has said the sensitive personal information stolen recently in the OPM data breach is unlikely to be offered for sale on the black market.
Rather, it’s more likely a national government – China being the “leading suspect” according to the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who tipped his hat to the operation – seeking to build a profile of US government personnel.
The information in that case might help a government “build a
database of US government employees that could help identify US officials and their roles or that could help target individuals to gain access to additional systems or information,” according to the report.
The report notes that data purported to be from the breach was offered for sale on the black market, but that the data was shown to be from an earlier breach. Nonetheless, security concerns and more abound, in particular for those whose fingerprints were on file.