The Surgeon General on Monday issued a warning to his staff that is all too familiar to federal employees : Your personal information may have been stolen . In an email , Surgeon General Vice Adm. Vivek H. Murthy told " commissioned corps " employees of the Public Health Service that information , including their names , dates of birth and Social Security numbers , " may have been accessed by unauthenticated users " who hacked the agency 's personnel system . " Based on our investigation , affected individuals are those served by this website - based system : current , retired , and former Commissioned Corps officers and their dependents , " the email said . The commissioned corps is a cadre of about 6,600 medical professionals including physicians , nurses , dentists , rehabilitation therapists , pharmacists , researchers and more reporting to the Surgeon General . They are involved in health - care delivery to underserved and vulnerable populations , disease control and prevention , food and drug regulation , and disaster response . Counting retirees , former employees and family members would bring the total of affected people much higher , although neither the email nor a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services , the parent agency of the PHS , specified a figure . The spokesman said the agency learned Sept. 20 that unauthenticated users could access a system used for payroll , leave , time , attendance and other personnel functions . The portal site has been disabled and will remain down while the investigation continues , although the Sept. 30 payroll run was unaffected , the email said . " Teams across the Department and across government are working to learn as much as we can as quickly as we can , and to further improve our systems to prevent this type of issue in the future . . . . Next steps could include offering identity protection services to affected individuals , " said the email , co - signed by HHS Acting Assistant Secretary for Health Karen B. DeSalvo . The email promises further information as it becomes available and offers instructions on how to request a free credit report and how to report unusual activity or potential errors on a credit report . The hack is the latest in a long line of breaches of federal employee records that have targeted individual agencies , including the Energy Department and the U.S. Postal Service , as well as the Thrift Savings Plan , the 401(k)-style retirement savings program for federal employees . The largest breaches , involving about 22 million people combined , hit two separate databases of the Office of Personnel Management . Those involved personnel records of current and former federal employees plus persons on whom the government had conducted background investigations , for security clearance or other reasons , since about 2000 . That resulted in a widespread offer of free credit monitoring and identity theft protection services for employees , and the creation of a new office to oversee background checks , along with boosted cyberdefenses . ;