Iran: US Most Vulnerable State in Cyber Space

(FNA)- Head of Iran's Civil Defense Organization Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali said the US is among the most vulnerable states in defending its cyber space and structures.

"The US is the most vulnerable country in area of cyber," Jalali told reporters in a press conference in Tehran on Saturday.

He also referred to President Barack Obama's order to the Department of Treasury to impose sanctions against any country that launches a cyber attack on the US, and warned that given the US weakness in this field, Washington may work out a plot to set up and blame Iran for cyber attacks to impose a new set of sanctions on the country, similar to what Washington has done to North Korea.

His remarks came after reports said that hackers who attacked a US government database could now be in possession of vast amounts of personal data on every federal employee, as the extent of the damage had been heavily underestimated.

“We believe that the Central Personnel Data File was the targeted database, and that the hackers are now in possession of all personnel data for every federal employee, every federal retiree, and up to one million former federal employees,” the President of the Union of American Federal of Government Employees (AFGE), J. David Cox, said in a letter to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) director Katherine Archuleta, seen by AP.

Last week, the OPM admitted a major cyber-attack took place in December 2014, but it was only detected in April. The hack compromised the personal information of some four million federal employees, the agency originally said.

While US officials quickly blamed China for the attack, Beijing dismissed the claims saying that jumping to any conclusions and making hypothetical accusations was irresponsible and counterproductive.

However, based on the OPM's internal briefings, Cox believes that the intruders might be actually in possession of all military records and veterans' information, including address, employment history, and all their benefits history.

The hacked database also contains hundreds of other pieces of information on every federal employee, including age, gender, race data and birth dates.