The Pentagon says 'hold my beer,' falls victim to massive data breach affecting roughly 3,000,000 people

After the FBI data breach we reported on last week, in which a hacking group claimed it had stolen data on "all FBI employees", a US defence official has confirmed that the Pentagon also fell victim to a cybersecurity breach. Except this one appears to be much larger, lasted for longer, and is potentially very worrying for many civilian US government employees and serving military personnel alike.

According to ABC News, the official said that the "Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) information system experienced unauthorized access of personally identifiable information by a small number of unauthorized users between October 2025 and July 2026."

The DMDC is one of the Pentagon's main data repositories for personnel records, including info on active-duty and reserve troops, alongside civilian employees, contractors, and military veterans. All told, the breach is said to affect 2.76 million living people, and around 294,000 who are deceased.

Once the unauthorized access was discovered, the DMDC "immediately remediated the vulnerability." …