(FreedomBeacon.com)- The recent hack of a health insurance exchange part of Obamacare was carried out by a foreign actor.
According to Republican Representative Bryan Steil, the chair of the Administration Committee in the House, the foreign actor was the culprit of the attack that resulted in the personal information of hundreds of members of the House as well as their staff being stolen.
About a week ago, these members of the House as well as their affected staff members, received notification from the chief administrative officer for the lower chamber that the D.C. Health Link exchange had been hacked, and that some of their personal information had been stolen as a result.
No one individual perpetrator, or hacking group, has been identified just yet, but Steil said they expect it to be foreign influence. As the congressman said during a recent appears on the podcast “John Solomon Reports”:
“There’s a very detailed forensic audit ongoing about this. Until that’s completed, we don’t have full answers to that. But, it’s not lost on any of us that there are both nefarious international actors as well as criminal gangs that try to get this to sell it for profit and are engaged in these types of data breaches all across the United States every single day.”
Last week, Catherine Szpindor, the chief administrative officer in the House, sent a letter to all of those people who the hack affected. In the letter, she wrote:
“Currently, I do not know the size and scope of the breach, but have been informed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that account information and PII of hundreds of members and House staff were stolen. I expect to have access to the list of impacted enrollees later today and will notify you directly if your information was compromised. DC Health Link will also likely contact you.”
She further advised the members to freeze their credit out of an abundance of caution. The letter also said that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have each requested that DC Health Link provide additional information on the hack, including “what data was taken, who was impacted and what steps they are taking – including providing credit monitoring protections – to protect House victims of this breach.”
Christopher Krebs, who once served as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s director, appeared on the “Face the Nation” program over the weekend and said it was possible that the hack could be linked to a “Russian-linked cyber criminal.”
He did say that his thoughts were only speculation and weren’t based on any specific evidence that he had.
No matter the case, Steil said that it was very important to figure out what happened with the hack so that no one else is affected. As he said:
“Today, this is members and staff and others in Washington, D.C., but tomorrow, this could be somebody sitting in my home in Janesville, Wisconsin, or Kenosha, Wisconsin, or anywhere else across the country as we continue to see nefarious actors engaged in identity theft and engage in data breaches across the country.”
