DHS Employee Details Exposed in Newly Published Data Leak

Employee information from across the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has been published online following a previously undisclosed breach earlier this year, exposing details about thousands of federal workers, including immigration and border agents.

Reports published Wednesday said the records include names, job titles and work contact information for more than 40,000 people. Staff at Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are among those affected.

DHS said it is aware of a potential breach and is working to address it. The department said it takes threats against its employees seriously and would provide more information as it becomes available.

The person claiming responsibility said the information came from a single sign-on system used by the department. Okta, the provider named in that claim, said it has no evidence that its own data or systems were compromised. The method used to obtain the records has not been independently established.

The public disclosure is new, but the underlying theft appears to have happened earlier. TechCrunch reported that timestamps in records it reviewed pointed to around mid-August. It was not immediately clear whether the weakness that allowed the theft had been fixed.