Data on more than 40,000 US DHS employees published online — TechCrunch
In the United States, personal and work-related data of more than 40,000 employees of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including border and immigration agents, cybersecurity specialists, and senior officials, has been published online. TechCrunch reports.
The dataset contains employees’ names, positions, work email addresses, mobile phone numbers, and workplaces. TechCrunch partially verified the authenticity of the information by matching the names of several known DHS employees with a copy of the database. Based on timestamps in the records, the data may have been extracted from the system around mid-August.
Who the dataset concerns
More than half of the records, about 21,000, concern employees of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), who work at airports and other ports of entry. Another approximately 10,000 records are linked to employees of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and its Homeland Security Investigations division.
The dataset also includes data on nearly one thousand employees of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Thousands of other records concern staff at DHS headquarters, US Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the Federal Protective Service. The total number of records amounts to approximately one-fifth of the DHS workforce, which numbers about 220,000 employees.
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The hacker’s statement and Okta’s response
A hacker using the pseudonym Department of Peace claimed to have obtained the data from the Okta single sign-on system, which DHS uses to provide employees and contractors with access to the central network. According to the hacker, the system also contained IT records and information on users’ permissions to access internal systems and applications. The hacker did not respond to TechCrunch’s inquiry about the circumstances of the incident.
An Okta spokesperson told the publication that the company was aware of the report but had no evidence that its own data or systems had been compromised. DHS did not provide a comment when contacted by TechCrunch. It is also unknown whether the vulnerability that may have been used to steal the data has been fixed.
Information on access to services
The leak contains data on employees’ membership in Active Directory groups, which determine access to internal tools, services, and third-party software. In particular, about 4,500 users, including ICE agents and employees of the deportation unit, were members of the Headspaceusers group.
The dataset also mentions groups associated with Penlink products, Mobile Fortify, and access to ChatGPT. Such records may indicate employees’ access to the relevant services, rather than necessarily their actual use.
