A hacker stole more than 40,000 DHS employee records

by | Oct 29, 2026 | Technology

A hacker stole more than 40,000 DHS employee records

The Department of Homeland Security experienced a significant data breach affecting more than 41,000 employees across multiple agencies. The compromised information includes names, job titles, phone numbers, email addresses, and office locations of personnel working in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, US Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Homeland Security Investigations.

According to technology publications, the breach was perpetrated by an individual using the alias “Department of Peace,” who gained access through Okta, an identity and access management service utilized by DHS. The breach contained approximately 21,000 records related to CBP employees and nearly 7,000 records belonging to ICE staff. The actor stated that the disclosure was intended to expose information about agency personnel, drawing a comparison to the agencies’ own data collection practices.

The compromised dataset, referred to as “Icepick,” was subsequently shared with cybersecurity researcher maia arson crimew and then transferred to Distributed Denial of Secrets, a nonprofit organization now hosting the leaked information. The breach also revealed details regarding DHS divisions with access to surveillance technologies, including facial recognition capabilities through the Mobile Fortify application and PenLink, a tool designed for collecting and analyzing data from mobile devices and online platforms.

This incident occurred in the context of a broader wave of security breaches targeting U.S. government agencies, following a similar incident weeks earlier involving stolen data from the FBI. The Department of Homeland Security had not provided a response to inquiries regarding the breach at the time of reporting.

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