Nearly Entire Population of Maine Victimized by Massive Data Breach

At least 1.3 million residents in Maine were impacted by a government data breach earlier this year.

A massive cyberattack in May affected the MOVEit file transfer system, a software program used by many government agencies at the state and federal levels, releasing the names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and government IDs of potentially all 1.38 million residents in the state, according to The Hill.

The attack was initiated by a Russian ransomware group, and eventually impacted at least 70 million people globally.

“Since the onset of the incident, the cybercriminals involved claimed their primary targets were businesses, with a promise to erase data from certain entities, including governments,” Maine government officials wrote in a news release.

“Despite their assertions that any data obtained from governments has been erased, the State is urging individuals to take steps to protect their personal information.

Most of the state’s government agencies were spared from the attack, but over 50 percent of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, and between 10 and 30 percent of the state Department of Education, were impacted by the data breach, according to the Maine government’s website.

The state announced that it will provide two years of complimentary credit monitoring and identity theft protection to the individuals whose Social Security numbers had been stolen.

Since the data breach occurred, Maine has engaged an “outside legal counsel,” blocked internet access to and from the MOVEit software as soon as the state was aware of the breach, hired cybersecurity professionals and worked to identify every individual who was impacted by the breach, according to the news release.

The Maine Department of Health and Human Services and the Maine Department of Education did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.