Hacktivists say they exposed contact details for more than 40,000 Homeland Security employees

WASHINGTON (Oct. 29) — A hacktivist group says it obtained records on more than 40,000 Department of Homeland Security employees and contractors, including names, work phone numbers, email addresses and office assignments, in what NPR called an unprecedented breach.

The group, which calls itself the Department of Peace, said it got the data by exploiting the department's single sign-on login system and passed it to Distributed Denial of Secrets, a transparency nonprofit that published the archive Wednesday, according to NPR and WIRED. The group said it acted to protest the department's deportation operations.

WIRED reported that the records cover about 41,000 people across DHS and seven of its agencies and were last updated in August. Customs and Border Protection staff account for more than half of the records, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement for about 10,000, according to WIRED's analysis. The outlet said the files also reference undercover and surveillance programs. Okta, the company whose login service was named, told WIRED it had no evidence its systems were compromised.

DHS said in a statement that it was "aware of a potential breach and is actively working to address the situation swiftly and effectively," according to NPR and TechCrunch. Politico said it could not independently verify the data, though it reported that Reuters and TechCrunch had matched entries to known DHS employees.

By Thursday morning, a searchable website built from the data had gone offline after its domain was placed on hold, and the department had filed a takedown notice through a security vendor, TechCrunch reported. The social network Bluesky also began blocking links to the nonprofit's site, according to TechCrunch.

The breach follows a series of recent cyber incidents targeting federal agencies, Politico reported.