A hacktivist collective has claimed responsibility for obtaining personal records concerning more than 41,000 Department of Homeland Security employees, including telephone numbers and email addresses. The purported compromise represents the latest in a wave of cyber incidents affecting United States federal agencies.
The group, identifying itself as the “Department of Peace,” stated that its objective is to “limit further harm by the DHS.” According to the government transparency nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets, which published the leaked dataset on its web portal, the collective secured the employee information by exploiting the agency’s utilization of Okta’s single sign-on service.
In an official statement regarding the incident, Okta maintained that its infrastructure remains secure. “We are aware of this report. Okta is secure, and we have no evidence our data or systems were compromised,” the company said.
The published database encompasses purported information on personnel across various agencies operating under the DHS umbrella, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and Homeland Security Investigations. A text file contained within the dataset and reviewed by reporters argued that the exposure was justified by agency surveillance practices. “They have our information so it’s only fair that we have theirs. The [Department of Peace] sincerely hopes that this information can be used to limit further harm by the DHS and supports all efforts in that direction,” the text file stated. According to separate reports, the database was last updated on Aug. 19.
Department of Homeland Security officials acknowledged the situation in a public statement. “DHS is aware of a potential breach and is actively working to address the situation swiftly and effectively. We take all security threats against our employees and officers seriously and will work to ensure all are properly protected. We will update the public when more information is available,” the agency stated.
The leaked files also isolate specific groups of personnel alleged to have held access to specialized internal infrastructure, such as the MobileFortify facial recognition tool. The deployment of this technology by DHS agents during immigration enforcement operations has previously drawn scrutiny from lawmakers concerned with civil liberties and privacy. The database indicates that at least 217 employees, all stationed within Customs and Border Protection, possessed access permissions for the tool.
Independent verification of the dataset’s complete authenticity remains unconfirmed by government officials, though matching processes performed by various technology and news organizations validated specific entries against known third-party records and staff names.
The development unfolds as federal cybersecurity personnel respond to a sustained series of digital incursions directed at government networks over preceding weeks. Those incidents included breaches targeting personnel systems at the Pentagon and the FBI. Throughout October alone, the electronic filing system of the Federal Election Commission was forced offline following an attempted intrusion, federal bankruptcy filing portals experienced outages, and a cyberattack struck a contact center operated by a Transportation Department safety agency, disrupting a registration service designed for commercial vehicle operators.
