Pentagon Hit With Class Action Over Data Breach Exposing Millions of Service Members' Data
The U.S. Defense Department is facing a class action lawsuit alleging it failed to protect sensitive personally identifiable information in a cyber breach that exposed data belonging to millions of current and former military members for months, Reuters reported.
The lawsuit, Edwards et al v. U.S. Department of War, No. 1:26-cv-03667, was filed Monday in federal court in Washington, D.C. The two plaintiffs, a current and a former Marine, aim to represent a class of more than three million U.S. service members and are seeking damages of more than $5 million. They are represented by Jason Rathod and Nicholas Migliaccio of Migliaccio & Rathod.
According to the complaint, the breach last year at the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) left Social Security numbers, dates of birth and other military personnel information exposed for months, and the Pentagon showed, in the lawsuit's words, flagrant disregard for the privacy interests of service members and other military-adjacent individuals. The intruders allegedly exploited a vulnerability in a personnel-records file-sharing system, allowing access to unencrypted personal data.
The breach was disclosed last month. Earlier reporting citing Pentagon officials put the number of people affected at more than three million, including about 2.76 million living individuals and about 294,000 deceased individuals, with unauthorized access running from October 2025 until the vulnerability was discovered and remediated on July 16, 2026. The department has said there was no indication the information had been misused, and it is offering one year of credit monitoring and identity-restoration services through IDX.
The Pentagon and lawyers for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment, Reuters said. In 2022, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management agreed to pay $63 million to resolve a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of millions of U.S. employees.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
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