What has emerged
According to a report by BBC Technology, the personal information of more than 41,000 people who work for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been made public. The data include names, work addresses and phone numbers of personnel, along with descriptions of the duties performed for each agency. The release occurred on Wednesday and also involves thousands of immigration enforcement personnel.
According to the source's account, most of those affected—more than 21,000—work for Customs and Border Protection; nearly 6,600 work for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The picture is completed by employees of Homeland Security Investigations, the Federal Protective Service and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The material was collected in a database named Icepick.
Who released the data and how
The BBC reports that a group called Department of Peace allegedly obtained the data from DHS, while journalist and cybersecurity researcher maia crimew, together with the website Distributed Denial of Secrets, published it online. The released material also includes dozens of names of previously unknown operations, the persons responsible for and participants in those operations, and some technologies used, including tools provided by Cellbrite and Palantir.
The Department of Peace said it gained access to DHS employee profiles through a single sign-on service called Okta. An Okta spokesperson said the company is aware of the claims but that its data and systems do not appear to have been compromised. The BBC notes that this is the third leak or cyberattack suffered by a government agency in recent weeks, after the FBI breach attributed to a group called ShinyHunters and the suspension of the Federal Election Commission over a suspected intrusion attempt.
The reactions and points to verify
DHS confirmed it is aware of a possible breach and is working to address it quickly. It added that it takes every threat to the security of its employees seriously and intends to update the public when more information is available. The BBC describes the leak of employee information as apparently unprecedented.
Several aspects remain to be clarified: the exact dynamics of the access, Okta's actual role, the accuracy and completeness of the published data, and the consequences for the security of the identified agents. The material contains no independent confirmation of the origin of the data or of the figures indicated, which must therefore be attributed to the cited sources.
