Data on more than 40,000 US homeland security staff leaked

Confidential and personal information belonging to more than 40,000 employees of US homeland security agencies has reportedly been leaked in a mass data breach. Documents published by transparency nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets contain details about operation names, surveillance programs and classified initiatives.

Operative Information Center-OMM reports that foreign media outlets published the information.

The leaked files disclose the names, phone numbers and email addresses of employees at the US Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security Investigations, and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

More than 21,000 of the employees named in the leak work for Customs and Border Protection, while about 6,600 work for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The records include job titles and internal email groups that indicate agents were assigned to special operations, digital forensics and covert tasks.

The incident comes as DHS has sought to monitor critics on social media, protesters and journalists, while also defending agents’ right to conceal their identities to protect their anonymity.

Distributed Denial of Secrets said the data was obtained by a hacker group calling itself “Department of Peace.” The group claims it accessed the information through Okta, a login service used by DHS, but Okta said its systems had not been breached.

This is the third major cyber incident involving US government agencies in the past month. In September, the ShinyHunters group claimed it had stolen data belonging to thousands of FBI employees. Last week, a class-action lawsuit was filed over the alleged leak of data belonging to millions of military personnel from the Department of Defense.

Reuters verified some of the information by checking internal records and contacting employees directly.