The identities of over 41,000 officials from the Department of Homeland Security have allegedly been exposed in a massive data breach by a hacktivist group calling itself the Department of Peace.
Late Wednesday stateside, the database was posted on Distributed Denial of Secrets, a nonprofit dedicated to news leaks, with claims that it was obtained from an Okta single sign-on service used by the DHS.
It appears to reveal employee names, offices, contact information and assignments, and is searchable.
In a response to CNBC, Okta said “Okta is secure, and we have no evidence our data or systems were compromised.”
DDoS said that “this is not a comprehensive list of all DHS employees,” quoting cofounder Emma Best saying, “Rather than an indiscriminate directory of every DHS employee, Icepick identifies many of the architects and drivers of DHS policy and operations.”
DHS didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The agency told the Washington Post that it was “aware of a potential breach” and was “working to address the situation swiftly and effectively.”
The searchable database appears to include employees from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Customs and Border Protection and the DHS headquarters.
The hacker group said the leak was carried out in response to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin reportedly saying on July 17 that ICE will be “turning up the heat on the streets” by intensifying immigration arrests and traffic stops.
In U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term, the backlash to his efforts to intensify arrests and deportations of suspected illegal immigrants has increased as ICE agents have been documented using physical force during operations.
DHS completed 980,000 deportations in the first 18 months of his term, according to the Migration Policy Institute.