The government now says the number of compromised fingerprints illegally accessed in the second hack of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is five-times higher than originally thought, Reuters reports. The government originally reported that 1.1 million fingerprints were stolen, but now the number has gone up to 5.6 million, the Department of Defense and OPM have said. The investigation of the breach by both agencies “identified archived records containing additional fingerprint data not previously analyzed,” the OPM stated. The agency downplayed the threat of the compromised biometric data, but said, “If, in the future, new means are developed to misuse the fingerprint data, the government will provide additional information to individuals whose fingerprints may have been stolen in this breach.”
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