Hackers Claim Leak of 40,000 DHS Employees' Personal Data
Names, job titles and work contact details for more than 40,000 DHS employees were published online. A hacker known as Department of Peace claims responsibility.
- 21,000 records belong to Customs and Border Protection employees.
- Just under 1,000 records belong to cybersecurity agency CISA staff.
- Timestamps suggest the records were taken around mid-August.
- Okta says its systems are secure and shows no evidence of compromise.
Why it matters: The leak covers about one-fifth of DHS's roughly 220,000-person workforce. That includes agents DHS has declined to name publicly.
- Access groups link staff to Penlink and the Mobile Fortify facial recognition app.
- Group labels show staff assigned to undercover and surveillance work.
How 16 sources split on this story
Where they split: Outlets give different ICE counts: TechCrunch reports about 10,000 ICE and HSI records, while The Verge reports nearly 7,000 for ICE.
Left coverage, 7 sources: The left frames the leak as ending the anonymity of agents behind DHS's deportation operations, while noting that the breach exposes a federal security failure.
What’s next: DHS has not commented. It is unclear whether the department knows of the breach or has closed the gap.
- DDoSecrets is hosting the data with a public search tool built by maia arson crimew.
- How did the hacker get into the Okta-linked system, if Okta itself was not compromised?
- Will public identification of agents lead to accountability, threats against employees, or both?
- Is the full dataset authentic, beyond the portions outlets verified?
