Major Breach at US Department of Homeland Security... 40,000 Employees' Data Leaked - Sarmad

The website “Distributed Denial of Secrets,” which specializes in leaking information, announced on Wednesday that it had published data pertaining to more than 40,000 employees of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including details about officials working in sensitive areas such as surveillance and human intelligence.

In a statement, the DHS said it was “aware of the possibility of a breach and is working hard to address the situation quickly and efficiently.” The department added that it was taking steps to ensure appropriate protection for its employees and would inform the public “when more information becomes available.”

This disclosure, which the nonprofit website says is based on information obtained from an entity calling itself the “Ministry of Peace,” marks the third largest leak of government data to make headlines in the past month.

In September, the hacker group “Shiny Hunters” claimed to have stolen a massive amount of data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), including sensitive job-related details and medical information concerning thousands of employees.

Last week, the Department of Defense faced a class-action lawsuit following a breach that exposed data relating to millions of current and former military personnel.

The DHS data includes employees’ names, phone numbers, and email addresses from agencies such as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Office of Homeland Security Investigations, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and other DHS components.

The leaked data also contained job titles and email distribution lists, details that revealed, among other things, personnel assigned to special operations, surveillance tasks, digital criminal investigations, and covert operations.