5.6m fingerprints stolen by hackers in US

Washington

ONE of the scariest parts of the massive cybersecurity breaches at the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) just got worse: the agency now says 5.6 million people's fingerprints were stolen as part of the hacks.

That's more than five times the 1.1 million government officials estimated when the cyberattacks were initially disclosed over the summer. However, OPM said on Wednesday the total number of those believed to be caught up in the breaches - which included the theft of the Social Security numbers and addresses of more than 21 million former and current government employees - remains the same.