Unknown individuals managed to get hold of sensitive data from over 130,000 sailors through a contractor's laptop, the US Navy announced on Wednesday.

The military branch was notified by Hewlett Packard Enterprise Services that hackers gained access to personal information through an employee's computer who supports a navy contract.

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The names and social security numbers of 134,386 current and former US sailors were compromised. Investigation of the cyberintrusion is in its early stages but so far has no indication to suggest deliberate misuse of the information, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service claimed in a release.

The personal data came from the Career Waypoint database, commonly known as C-WAY, that sailors utilize to submit re-enlistment and Navy Occupational Specialty applications, a navy official revealed.

"The Navy takes this incident extremely seriously - this is a matter of trust for our sailors," Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Admiral Robert Burke said in a statement. "We are in the early stages of investigating and are working quickly to identify and take care of those affected by the breach."

Hewlett Packard informed the navy of the infiltration on Oct. 27, and the affected sailors will be notified by multiple ways in the coming weeks, including phone, letter, and email. They will also look into credit monitoring service options to be provided to the enlistees involved.

The American multinational information technology company won a $3.5 billion contract to handle the navy's communication network in 2013. According to Navy Times, this is the second major reported breach involving both parties. In the aforementioned year, the service disclosed that Iran managed to penetrate its unclassified Navy and Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) developed by HP in 2000.

The Wall Street Journal reported the following year that the hack was due to a flawed contract and irregular maintenance.  Hewlett Packard failed to mention on the signed agreement that they were supposed to provide security to a set of navy databases. Furthermore, the security databases were not maintained regularly.

It led to a four-month long clean-up operation of its systems and a $10-million expense before the officials completely cleared the hackers out and built a more sophisticated protection.

Tags Navy, Personal Data Breached, Personal Data Hacked, 130000 Sailors, Hewlett Packard, HP, HP Breach, HP Hack, Navy HP