About 46,000 veterans’ personal information was compromised when a Department of Veterans Affairs online system was hacked, officials said Monday.
The compromised data may have included social security numbers.
Veterans who were affected by the breach should be contacted by letter, with instructions on how to protect their information. If veterans do not receive an alert by mail, then their data wasn’t involved and they don’t have to take any action, VA said.
Hackers broke into an online application for the VA Financial Services Center, intending to steal payments to VA-contracted community healthcare providers, the department said in a news release Monday.
VA did not include details on what types of data were compromised, but said that it planned to offer free credit monitoring services “to those whose social security numbers may have been compromised.”
For more details see here and here.
Veterans or family members who receive notification that their personal information was affected can reach out to the Financial Services Center help desk directly at VAFSCVeteransSupport@va.gov or by mail.
