If the hackers who broke into the Office of Personnel Management's data should go looking through it for security clearance information, the risk to some military members could be high, according to some experts.

No active-duty service members would have data among the compromised records unless they have prior federal civilian employment, an OPM spokesman told Military Times. However, for troops that fall into that category, especially those with security clearances, the risk could be significant.

A foreign government, for example, might find information in stolen clearance questionnaires that could be used to blackmail clearance holders, speculated Paul Rosenzweig, founder of the homeland security consulting company Red Branch consulting and a senior adviser to The Chertoff Group.

"All your overseas deployments, who you know, how you spend your money, prior bad acts, embarrassments ranging from affairs to drug use," said Rosenzweig, listing information he believed might come to light through the data breach. "... I hold a security clearance myself and I've been sitting here thinking of a half-dozen things I haven't told my wife."

Andrew Borene, a cybersecurity expert with the Truman National Security Project and a former Marine intelligence officer, disagreed that the data is likely to yield effective blackmail material, but fraud against service members is a real risk.

Read the full report at MilitaryTimes.com.

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