Hackers breach Pentagon database, access data of nearly 3 million service members
Hackers infiltrated a major Pentagon personnel database, gaining access to confidential information on roughly 3 million U.S. military personnel, ABC News reports.
According to ABC News, citing a U.S. Department of Defense official, hackers breached one of the Pentagon's major personnel databases, obtaining confidential information on approximately 3 million military personnel.
What was stolen
The breach exposed Social Security numbers and details about the positions held by affected individuals, the source said. In total, 2.76 million living people and records of another 294,000 deceased individuals were affected. The scale and sensitivity of the leaked data are raising national security concerns, since the files contained detailed information about the specific roles held by service members and civilian personnel.
How the breach happened
The source stated that unauthorized access to the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) system occurred between October 2025 and July 2026, carried out by a small number of outside users. Once the incident was detected, DMDC immediately closed the vulnerability. The DMDC is one of the Pentagon's core repositories, storing personnel records for active-duty service members, reservists, civilian employees, contractors, retirees, veterans and military family members — holding more than 60 million personnel files in total. Defense Department officials said they have so far found no evidence that the stolen data has been misused.
A separate incident at the FBI
News of the Pentagon breach emerged as the FBI sent staff a notice on Friday outlining its response to a hack of its FBIJobs.gov careers portal. According to ABC News sources, the attacker threatened to release data including employees' names, home addresses, personal and work contact details, Social Security numbers, dates of birth and emergency contact information, prompting the bureau to treat every employee's personal data as potentially compromised. On Monday, however, the hacking group shinyhunters said it would not release the data after all.
