Hackers forced State Department to replace 30,000 employee credentials in 2014

By , Sarah Westwood

Published December 20, 2015

Log-in credentials for an estimated 30,000 State Department employees had to be replaced after unidentified hackers breached the agency's unclassified communications network last November.

The incident raised questions on the severity of the breach, which State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki downplayed by pointing to the “thousands of attacks” that pepper the agency’s systems every day.

“The reason why there’s been a focus, I think, on this particular incident is because of the extent and how broad it was,” Psaki said at a Feb. 20 media briefing. “And obviously, we took steps to combat that, but it’s something that we work on every day.”

A State Department official who declined to be named told the Washington Examiner cybersecurity “best practices” dictated the agency replace 30,000 secure log-in devices known as "fobs" after the network intrusion.