The Federal Aviation Administration announced on Monday that their computers had been hacked last week and that 45,000 names of their employees had been accessed. The administration also added that the hackers had obtained the access to the names of the employees and the FAA retires as well as their Social Security numbers.

A statement was released by the administration saying that all the employees that had been involved in this hacking situation will receive personal letters to notify them about the breach.

They added that the FAA is trying to move as quickly as possible as to avert these kinds of happenings and it seems that they had already identified the immediate steps to prevent this and long-term measures to protect the secret data and personal information.

According to the same statement, the hackers had obtained access to at least 48 files on the computer. Two of these files also contained some personal information for every person that was on the FAA’s employee rolls since February 2006.

Yet, no other air-traffic control system and agency operations had been accessed during the time that the server had been hacked. In addition, some other rumors say that the statement released by the FAA was not encouraging at all.

Further information shows that the federal agency security breaches of such importance aren’t new at all for the authorities. A U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs laptops and hard drive which held data for 26.5 million veterans and active-duty employee had been stolen in May 2006.

The VA’s IT infrastructure was affected by the incident and the general counsel had resigned back then. In August of the same year 30,000 Navy applicants were affected by the theft of a laptop belonging to the Department of Defense.