Census Bureau Hit By Cyberattack in 2020, No Population Data Compromised

The U.S. Census Bureau's remote access computer servers were hit by a cyberattack in January 2020 but no data on the American population was compromised, the Associated Press reported.

A report released Wednesday by the Office of Inspector General concluded the hackers' efforts to keep access to the system did not work and that the attack was not made on the 2020 U.S. Census data. It also noted the Census Bureau did not seize opportunities to protect itself against the attack alongside failing to identify and report the attack soon enough.

"Furthermore, no systems or data maintained and managed by the Census Bureau on behalf of the public were compromised, manipulated or lost," Census Bureau Director Ron Jarmin said in a statement.

Firewalls thwarted the hackers' efforts to maintain access to the system. However, changes that were not permitted were made like new user accounts that were created.

For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.

According to the Office of Inspector General, the statistical agency also failed to keep sufficient system logs, which hindered the investigation, and was using an operating system no longer supported by the vendor, the watchdog report said.

In a written response, Jarmin reiterated that none of the systems used for the 2020 census were compromised, nor was the nation's once-a-decade head count affected in any way.

The 2020 head count data was being used to determine how many congressional seats each state gets and for the drawing of congressional and legislative districts. The data also is used for helping distribute $1.5 trillion in federal spending each year.

The Census Bureau on Wednesday released a set of measurements that reveal how people were counted and whether administrative records or a statistical technique were used to fill in the gaps for households where people didn't respond to the 2020 census questionnaire.

The bureau had previously released state-level data, and the information released Wednesday were summaries of county and tract-level data.

They showed that the use of a statistical technique called imputation was highest in counties in Louisiana and New York. Imputation involves using information about neighbors with similar characteristics to fill in head counts or demographic characteristics for households lacking data.

The count in Louisiana was challenged by a series of hurricanes last year, and some census takers reported difficulties getting access to apartment buildings in major cities due to the pandemic.

In some cases, census takers were only able to get a count of the number of people living in a home without getting information about the race, sex, age or relationships in the household. Counties in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and New York, on average, were higher than the national average.

The Census Bureau said in a statement that the measurements reflect what was expected in a "normally distributed population."

"Some counties and tracts are higher on some metrics and some are lower on other metrics, but no signs point to anything unexpected in the results," the statement said.