Passwords of 80,000 federal contractor personnel exposed

The employees are at risk of identity theft after a hacker penetrated a database at market research firm Deltek and stole their personal information, as well as possibly credit card data on 25,000 of the individuals.

In an email to customers, Mike Corkery, the company’s president and CEO, said the attacker obtained usernames and passwords for a knowledge portal, called GovWin IQ.

“Deltek said the widespread cyberattack also affected a number of federal agencies and other companies,” Federal News Radio reports.

The offender took advantage of a “security vulnerability” to break in at Deltek, according to company officials. They did not provide details on the weakness.

Corkery said that law enforcement authorities already have made an arrest in the case.

"It is important to note that we have received no indication that your GovWin IQ username and password were misused in any way," he wrote. "We have remedied the security vulnerability that we believe the hacker exploited in order to gain unauthorized access to our GovWin IQ system.

ThreatWatch is a regularly updated catalog of data breaches successfully striking every sector of the globe, as reported by journalists, researchers and the victims themselves.