Leak Site Publishes Data on More Than 40,000 Homeland Security Employees

The leak website Distributed Denial of Secrets said on Wednesday that it has published data on more than 40,000 employees of the Department of Homeland Security, including information about officials working in sensitive areas such as surveillance and human intelligence.

In a statement, DHS said it was "aware of a potential breach and is actively working to address the situation swiftly and effectively." The agency said it was working to make sure its employees were properly protected and would update the public "when more information is available."

The nonprofit data transparency group says the material draws on information obtained by an entity calling itself the "Department of Peace." It is the third major government data leak to make headlines in the past month.

In September, the hacking group ShinyHunters claimed it had stolen a large trove of data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including sensitive job details and medical information on thousands of bureau employees. Last week, the Defense Department faced a class action lawsuit after a breach exposed data on millions of current and former military personnel.

The DHS data contains names, phone numbers and email addresses of employees at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security Investigations, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and other DHS component agencies. It also lists job titles and email groups, which among other things show which agents were assigned to special operations, surveillance, computer forensics and undercover work.

Distributed Denial of Secrets co-founder Emma Best said the hacktivist known as "maia arson crimew" built a search tool that lets the public browse the data. Best said the tool would "replace anonymity with accountability" and would empower journalists, guide public records requests and strengthen congressional oversight.

The Department of Peace did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement released with the data, it said DHS employees "have our information, so it's only fair that we have theirs," and that it hoped the data "can be used to limit further harm by the DHS and supports all efforts in that direction." The entity claimed responsibility in March for hacking DHS and posting documents related to contracts with outside vendors.

Best's statement said the Department of Peace took the data from the Okta sign-on service used by DHS. Reuters could not immediately corroborate that claim. Okta told Reuters, "Okta is secure, and we have no evidence our data or systems were compromised."

Reuters also said it could not immediately verify the authenticity of the whole data set. However, it matched personal information on six DHS employees named in the leak to credit bureau records and breach data held by the dark web intelligence platform District 4 Labs. Reuters called three DHS employees directly and confirmed their phone numbers and other details, and one said it was the first they had heard of a breach.

In several cases the data matched information available on employees' LinkedIn profiles. In others, it revealed nonpublic details about internal DHS organization charts or previously undisclosed programs or operations.