Hacktivist Group Says It Obtained Personal Data On Thousands Of Dhs Employees

A hacktivist group working to “limit further harm by the DHS” says it obtained data on more than 41,000 Department of Homeland Security employees, including staffers’ phone numbers and email addresses.

POLITICO could not independently verify the dataset's authenticity. Reuters and TechCrunch matched information from the leak to third-party records and known names of DHS employees.

The apparent breach is the latest in a series of cyber incidents targeting federal agencies in recent weeks, adding to the number of federal employees whose data hackers appear to have compromised.

According to the government transparency nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets, which published the leaked data on its website, a hacktivist group called “Department of Peace” obtained the employee information by leveraging DHS’s use of Okta’s single sign-on service.

“We are aware of this report. Okta is secure, and we have no evidence our data or systems were compromised," Okta said in a statement.

The information on Distributed Denial of Secrets’ website includes purported details on employees at agencies under the DHS umbrella, including ICE, Customs and Border Protection, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and Homeland Security Investigations.

“They have our information so it’s only fair that we have theirs. The [Department of Peace] sincerely hopes that this information can be used to limit further harm by the DHS and supports all efforts in that direction,” a text file in the dataset reviewed by POLITICO said.

The database was last updated on Aug. 19, according to WIRED.

In a statement, DHS said it is "aware of a potential breach and is actively working to address the situation swiftly and effectively. We take all security threats against our employees and officers seriously and will work to ensure all are properly protected. We will update the public when more information is available.”

The dataset also identifies groups of DHS staffers who it claims had access to internal tools, such as the facial recognition tool MobileFortify. Lawmakers raised civil liberties and privacy concerns around DHS agents using this tool during immigration enforcement operations. The database suggests at least 217 DHS employees — all of whom work for CBP — had access to the tool.

The possible leak comes as federal security professionals are reeling from weeks of cyberattacks across government networks.

This includes breaches of personnel systems at the Pentagon and the FBI last month. Just in the month of October, the Federal Election Commission’s electronic filing system was taken offline after an attempted hack, federal bankruptcy filing websites went down and a cyberattack hit a Transportation Department safety agency contact center, affecting a registration service intended to help drivers and operators of large trucks and vehicles.