The U.S. Navy said hackers have gained access to the Social Security numbers and other sensitive information of more than 134,000 current and former U.S. sailors.
The data breach occurred after a hackers compromised the laptop of an employee of Navy contractor Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
In a statement released Wednesday, the Navy said that the information was accessed by "unknown individuals" and that an investigation was underway to identify and help those whose information was exposed.
The information was taken from what is known as the Career Appoints database, which is used to submit re-enlistment and occupation requests.
The statement said there was no evidence of "misuse" of the compromised information.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise informed the Navy of the breach October 27.
This is the latest in a string of data breaches in the U.S. this year. In a report issued Tuesday by the Identify Theft Resource Center, 901 breaches occurred in 2016, exposing the records of more than 34 million people.
The breaches occurred in the government, financial, business, educational and healthcare sectors.
The most breaches, 397, occurred in the business sector, exposing records on more than 5.5 million people.
There were 61 cyberattacks in the government/military sector, compromising the records of 12.9 million people.
Despite the large number of data breaches this year, none compare to the worst-ever data breach of U.S. federal government records. In 2015, the security clearance applications and other sensitive information of some 21.5 million people were compromised.
Top 5 U.S. data breaches
- U.S. Office of Child Support Enforcement (federal agency): 5 million records exposed.
- Banner Health (a nonprofit health health system): 3.6 million records exposed
- Newkirk Products (a provider of healthcare identification cards for health insurance plans): almost 3.5 million records exposed
- Washington Department of Fishing & Wildlife (a Washington state wildlife protection agency): 2.4 million records exposed
- 21st Century Oncology (a provider of integrated cancer care services): 2.2 million records exposed
