Lawmaker: Feds using software I laughed at 20 years ago

Olivier Knox
·Chief Washington Correspondent
Updated

U.S. Office of Personnel Management Director Katherine Archuleta testifies before Congress on the data breach of OPM computers. (Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) 

A devastating cyberattack on federal government systems, in which the assailants may have made off with sensitive information about millions of federal workers and contractors, has raised fresh concerns about Washington’s vulnerabilities and sparked an angry search for what went wrong.

For Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, a former undercover CIA officer and cybersecurity expert, one obvious problem is that the federal government is using systems so outdated that he would have laughed at them 20 years ago when he was studying computer science in college.

Hurd, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Information Technology, also says someone should be fired over the cyberattack on the systems of the Office of Personnel Management.

The congressman declined to say who was behind the attack, though officials have privately blamed China, or how many federal workers or contractors were affected.