Hackers of US government data may also have hit insurers

The Boston Globe reports:

The same Chinese hackers who breached the records of at least 4 million government workers through the Office of Personnel Management appear to have been responsible for similar thefts of personal data at two major health care firms, Anthem and Premera, according to cybersecurity experts.

The attacks, which began last year and were all discovered this spring, appear to mark a new era in cyberespionage with the theft of huge quantities of data and no clear motive for the hackers.

There is no evidence that the data collected was used for criminal purposes like faking identities to make credit card purchases. Instead, the attackers seem to be amassing huge databases of personal information about Americans. Some have high-level security clearances, which the Office of Personnel Management handles, but millions of others do not, and the reasons for their records being taken have puzzled investigators.

All of the attacks have one thing in common: The US government has traced them to China, although it is unclear whether the attackers are working for the state.

Based on forensics, security experts believe the attackers are not one of the hacking units of the People’s Liberation Army, which were named in a federal indictment last year that focused on the theft of intellectual property. Researchers say these hackers used different tools than those utilized by the Liberation Army’s Third Department, which oversees cyberintelligence gathering. But that does not exclude another state-sponsored group or the adoption of new technologies that are harder to trace.

For you rookies out there.