Details of thousands of US immigration agents leaked in major hack

Details of more than 41,000 personnel working for the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including thousands involved in immigration enforcement, have been leaked to the public. The leak includes names, work addresses and phone numbers of DHS staff, including agents working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection, along with descriptions of the work they do for each agency. Wednesday’s leak marks the third time in recent weeks a government agency has been targeted by leaks or hacks. A representative of the DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The seemingly unprecedented breach of employee information was put online on Wednesday by a group called the Department of Peace alongside cybersecurity researcher and hacker maia crimew.

The information was put in a database named Icepick and shared through a website hosted by Distributed Denial of Secrets. Most of the agents included, more than 21,000 of them, work for CBP, according to the data. Nearly 6,600 work for ICE. Other records show agents with Homeland Security Investigations, the Federal Protective Service and even people working for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The leaked information also included dozens of previously unknown operation names, the agents that led and worked on those operations, and some of the technology they used in their work, including tech provided by Cellbrite and Palantir. The groups wrote in an online statement that the the leak was not meant to be a directory of every DHS agent. Rather the aim was to replace “anonymity with accountability”, according to Emma Best, a co founder of DDoSecrets. “The leak is extraordinary but deceptive in it’s simplicity as it identifies the officials responsible for…