Census Bureau: Anonymous took no sensitive data

No sensitive data was taken in a recent hack of the U.S. Census Bureau, the agency’s director said in a blog post Friday.

“I want to assure you that at this time every indication is that the breach … did not include personally identifiable information provided by people responding to our censuses and surveys,” said bureau head John Thompson.

{mosads}The hacking group Anonymous has taken credit for the intrusion, which Thompson said hit the Federal Audit Clearinghouse, “which is housed on an externally facing IT system that contains non-confidential information, such as names of the person submitting the information, organization addresses and phone numbers, site user names, etc.”

“The Clearinghouse site does not store any confidential household or business data collected by the Census Bureau,” he added. “The Federal Audit Clearinghouse is used to collect single audit reporting packages from state and local governments, nonprofit organizations and Indian tribes expending federal awards.”

Anonymous tweeted out links to data dumps that appeared to be usernames, email addresses and phone numbers for the bureau’s 4,200 staff members.

“It appears the database was compromised through a configuration setting that allowed the attacker to gain access to the four files posted to the hacker’s site,” Thompson wrote.

But no digital invaders got past that point, Thompson added.

“We have seen no indication that there was any access to internal systems.”

According to Anonymous, the cyberattack was a protest against the free trade deals that the U.S. is trying to negotiate with its European and Asian partners.

While the administration argues the deals would be an economic boon and a way to standardize international labor and environmental laws, digital rights advocates have opposed the negotiations as potentially destructive to a free and open Internet.

The Census Bureau has pulled down the clearinghouse system for the time being and is adding security measures to its site.

“Your trust is paramount to our mission,” Thompson said.