Allegations of a significant security breach involving the Social Security Administration (SSA) are under investigation by the agency's inspector general. The breach reportedly involves a former software engineer from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a project led by Elon Musk, who allegedly obtained sensitive databases containing personal information of over 500 million individuals.
The whistleblower complaint, which surfaced in January, claims that the engineer sought assistance in transferring SSA databases, including the "Numident" and "Master Death File," from a thumb drive to his personal computer for potential data alteration. Although both the SSA and the contractor previously denied awareness of the complaint, they later investigated and found no confirmation of the allegations.
This investigation follows another whistleblower report from August, where Charles Borges, the former chief data officer at SSA, raised concerns about the security of agency data stored in an unprotected cloud environment. Borges emphasized the severity of the situation, stating that the extent of data exposure remains uncertain.
The SSA has communicated the ongoing investigation to both Congress and the Government Accountability Office, yet neither the agency nor the implicated contractor have provided comments regarding the current inquiry.