Sen. John Boozman (R., Ark.) said personal information on the Navy’s most elite special operations team could be in the hands of America’s adversaries following the cyber attack on the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Boozman told a gathering of reporters in Washington, D.C., on Thursday that the attacks, suspected to have originated from China, targeted the "most sensitive information we have."
"The breach there was really staggering, this magnitude some of the most sensitive information," Boozman said. "A lot of people when you fill out a form to get a top security clearance, you’re talking about a 120 plus page form."
The security breaches have left the personal information of roughly 22 million federal employees in the hands of hackers, including Social Security numbers, fingerprints, and passwords.
Individuals applying for security clearances include members of SEAL Team 6.
"The second breach, you’ve got military personnel," Boozman said. "We might have a situation, you never know, SEAL Team 6, their records are in there because they went through the same security clearance."
"So it’s just really very, very serious," he said.
The Arkansas senator criticized the lack of cybersecurity within OPM, saying the agency "didn’t even know how many servers they had."
"We spend $82 billion a year on IT, $82 billion a year and we have very little to show for it," Boozman said. "But I think it’s the tip of the iceberg, certainly as a committee we’re going to look—if we need to give them more money, we’ll do whatever it takes to keep these things safe."