If you enjoy really bad movies, 1958 was a very good year. Among others, it gave us “The Blob”. The star was the late Steve McQueen. Although 27 at the time, he played a love-struck teenager. Remember, it was a Hollywood production.

Steve and his girlfriend were making out (is that term PC today?) near a small town in central Pennsylvania. Before reaching second base, a meteor (carrying The Blob) crashes nearby. An old man whose mother never warned him not to poke a meteor with a stick pokes the meteor with a stick. The Blob emerges and gobbles up the codger, shoes and all. Twenty-seven year old teenager Steve McQueen and his girlfriend escape The Blob’s subsequent eating spree dramatically reduces the population of the Keystone State.

After gorging on farmers, mechanics and the occasional cop, The Blob is caught and airlifted to the Arctic, or maybe the Antarctic (somewhere cold) where he/she is dropped and frozen. End of story.

Fast forward to 2015. A federal version of “The Blob” premieres. In this one, bad people hack into Uncle Sam’s holy of holies, the central personnel files. Names, Social Security numbers and highly personal data is breached. It is now believed to be in the hands of China. (When “The Blob” was
produced, the Cold War was on and Russia was the enemy. And it was just a movie. The Breach is for real.

Estimates of the number of people hacked range from 4.2 million to 14 million, after a second hack was revealed. On Monday, CNN had the number up to 18 million. One thing for sure. It, like The Blob, is not getting any smaller.

We still don’t know the number of people who are caught up in the Great Hack of 2015. Nor the type of or extent of the data breached. Current, former and retired feds have been getting notifications from OPM.

So where is this heading? Reader Joe T.  has an interesting (as in nightmarish) thought. He said: “Here’s an angle that might affect current & former federal employees:

“What private sector firm would want to hire a current/former fed knowing that they may have been a victim of the recent OPM hack? Fed experience (and Top Secret security clearances) may have been highly valued by some employers, but who would hire a potentially compromised person now???”

Transition to Retirement:  Benefits expert Tammy Flanagan and financial planner Micah Shilanski   have teamed up to produce a webinar series on retirement. The six webinars will produce 18 hours of pre-retirement training and information. The first in the series, FERS Three Irreversible Mistakes, begins Thursday.  It is available online through some federal agencies or to individuals. For more information, click here.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By Michael O’Connell

Phoenixville, Pennsylvania — one of the filming locations for “The Blob” — hosts an annual Blobfest. One of the highlights for participants is reenacting the famous scene when moviegoers run screaming from the town’s Colonial Theatre.

Source: Wikipedia

More from Federal News Radio:

Should OPM Director Katherine Archuleta resign over data breach?

Members of Congress from both parties, as well as Federal Drive host Tom Temin, have called for OPM Director Katherine Archuleta to resign following the agency’s response to a massive data breach.

A sheriff is needed to keep the peace in the cloud

Who is watching over “cloud town” to preempt vendor lock-in, track and enforce service level agreements (SLAs), and ensure that when a new cloud provider says they are backing up your data locally in the United States, that they aren’t in fact sending it overseas to take advantage of cheaper hosting options and pocketing the difference?

Read all of Federal News Radio’s coverage of the OPM Cyber Breach.

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