USPS stands for the United States Postal Service. It is an independent agency allotted for handling the work of the postal service and its related services. USPS is a portal service responsible for operating within the United States. It was formed in the year 1971 by the United States Congress. It is the individual branch of the federal government specially assigned for particular work. The work assigned to USPS is to look after the mailing of letters and packages, sorting and delivering mail, and selling postal products like stamps, mailing supplies and commemoratives, etc. Let’s know ‘Has USPS been hacked?’
Anything connected to the internet is now vulnerable to security threats. USPS is a big organization carrying many essential pieces of their clients’ information. Cyber threats are too dangerous for that information. In the history of USPS, there were also some similar cyberattacks done on it under the name of hacking in the year 2014.
What Is USPS?
USPS is a postal service providing agency in the United States. It was formed after the strike by New York postal workers over their condition of low wages and other complaints. After gaining the support of many other postal services and strengthening their points. The federal government was still not convinced and didn’t provide any additional benefits to the workers, instead, it made a different agency for postal service from the earlier cabinet-level post office department. This indirectly fulfilled all the demands of postal office workers and gave rise to the agency we know as USPS.
Has USPS been hacked before?
USPS can keep a record of any personal information of their customers. This information is needed and entered by the Customers only for their postal work to be done. However, storing any data in electronic form is always vulnerable to hackers. Hackers are those who try to break the security of any electronic file to gain the residing information by illegal means. Hacking is one of the common unlawful services done across the globe. With the same thing, USPS was also hacked by hackers in the year 2014. That was the last time the USPS system was hacked by unknown sources. After that, there is no report of any hacking case as approved by USPS.USPS was hacked on October 22 and November 7 in the year 2014 as per the statement given by US postal service.
Hacking Deets:
As per the statement given by USPS, the hacking was done by an anonymous source. The hacking was limited to certain things only. The aspects compromised during hacking included the information of customer care call records along with the employee’s data. Apart from these, a few USPS computers were also hacked. However, the website of USPS was found to be working naturally. About 800000 employees were affected by the hacking.
The compromised information about employees included information such as their names, date of birth, social security number, address, start and end date of their employment, emergency contact information, and some other similar information. All these things were the affected part of hacking. Apart from these, there were no effects found in the information such as credit and debit card details, payment details, etc. Only those contacting USPS by the means of call and email were included in the data compromising list.
Development Made After Hacking:
Even though the hacking introduced some disruption in the normal trust carried by USPS. There were no reports of any information being used for illegal means. That can be considered as a good part. Using customers’ information can create great havoc for USPS, which they were saved from. After the attack, there were multiple measures taken by the USPS to prevent the same case in the future. There were also some loopholes found in the website of USPS which allows one user to see the information of other users in some way. All these were worked on and got solved after some time. From that attack till now, there is no other case reported of any cyber attack done on USPS.
Conclusion:
USPS is the United States postal service taking charge of every service related to the postal service. There was some hacking observed in the USPS system in the year 2014. It was an anonymous attack but suffered the least damage. As the things compromised were just the customer’s information who had contacted USPS through calls or emails and a few employees’ details were hacked. This information was also not found to be used afterward for any illegal use.
Frequently Asked Questions:
- Who runs USPS?
- USPS is currently run by its 75th CEO named Louis DeJoy.
- Is USPS the part of the government?
- No, USPS is not the actual part of the government. It is a large enterprise operated by the federal government instead.
- Can USPS be considered the same as regular mail?
- There is much difference between both the companies. Regular mail simply provides mailing service and only. However, USPS is a wide range of postal services providing services in many methods.
