Security News > 2021 > February > Data breach exposes 1.6 million Washington unemployment claims
Washington's State Auditor office has suffered a data breach that exposed the personal information in 1.6 million employment claims.
The Office of the Washington State Auditor states that they suffered a data breach after a threat actor exploited a vulnerability in a secure file transfer service from Accellion.
"It was not until the week of January 25, 2021, that Accellion confirmed to SAO that SAO files were subject to this attack and provided the information needed for SAO to begin to identify which data files were impacted and individuals whose personal information is in those files," SAO stated in a security breach notification posted to their website.
The exposed claims were in data files from the Employment Security Department and contain sensitive personal information of Washington residents.
"These ESD data files contained unemployment compensation claim information including the person's name, social security number and/or driver's license or state identification number, bank account number and bank routing number, and place of employment," the breach notification explains.
In addition to unemployment claims, the breach exposed files from some Washington local governments and other state agencies were also affected.
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