The US Department of Veterans Affairs has reported a data breach incident where one of its Financial Services Center apps has been exploited. The unauthorized person who hacked the app has diverted payments intended for aiding veterans medical expenses, also, may have accessed the personal information of about 46,000 veterans. The VA department is now informing all of them via mails.
Veterans Personal Data Breached via FSC App
The Department of Veterans Affairs is dedicated to serving the military veterans with several medical and non-financial aids like covering heath treatments, providing loans, education assistance, life insurance, disability compensation etc. Eligible veterans and kins of those deceased can access a part of these services through many apps put up by the department.
Under this, one of the apps belonging to the VA Financial Services Center (FSC) that deals with the financial assistance for veterans have been attacked. The department has disclosed a security breach on Monday where it reported that an unauthorized party has accessed an FSC app, and diverted payments that were intended for the service providers of veterans medical treatments.
Also, they say that the personal information of about 46,000 veterans may have been accessed in the process, that includes social security numbers of few. The VA department explained the attacker have socially engineered the FSC app and exploited the authentication protocol of it, thereby gaining access to it.
After finding out, the department is now sending emails to inform all those who were affected, and offering free credit monitoring services for those whose social security numbers may have been breached. This incident marks the second time of a data breach in Veterans Affairs history, where the first one occurred in 2006 affecting personal records of 26 million people!
Other Trending News:- News
