Hack exposes names and contact details of more than 41,000 US Homeland Security staff, including ICE agents
The names, work addresses and phone numbers of more than 41,000 people working for the US Department of Homeland Security, including about 6,600 immigration enforcement agents, have been published online. The department says it is aware of a potential breach and is working to address it.
Personal work details of more than 41,000 employees of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were made public on Wednesday, 28 October, in what appears to be an unprecedented breach of the agency's staff records. The data includes names, work addresses and phone numbers, along with descriptions of what each person does.
More than 21,000 of those listed work for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and nearly 6,600 for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), whose agents often operate with their faces covered and without visible identification. The files also cover staff of Homeland Security Investigations, the Federal Protective Service and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. They name dozens of previously unknown operations, the officers who led them and some of the technology used, including tools from Cellebrite and Palantir.
A group calling itself the Department of Peace said it took the information from DHS by getting into the agency's Okta single sign-on service, a widely used login system for internal platforms. The data was then published by the cybersecurity researcher and journalist maia arson crimew and the leak site Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets). DDoSecrets co-founder Emma Best said the aim was to replace "anonymity with accountability", not to create a directory of every agent. A Department of Peace spokesperson linked the hack directly to the conduct of ICE agents.
A DHS spokesperson said the department is "aware of a potential breach" and is "actively working to address the situation swiftly and effectively", adding that it takes all threats against its employees seriously and will update the public. Okta said it was aware of the reports. According to the BBC, it is the third time in recent weeks that a US government agency has been hit by a leak or hack.