Leak site publishes data on more than 41,000 DHS employees obtained by hacktivists
The Department of Peace group shared it with Swiss hacker/journalist maia arson crimew and DDoSecrets put it online.
A leak website was published Wednesday, showcasing internal data on more than 41,000 Department of Homeland Security employees and contractors after it was obtained by hackers who claimed to have breached an identity service used by the agency.
The transparency nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets and the hacker maia arson crimew got the data from a hacktivist outfit known as the Department of Peace.
”The leak is extraordinary but deceptive in [its] simplicity as it identifies the officials responsible for overseeing covert and undercover operations, the government’s hunt for leakers and the failed BlueLeaks investigation — along with key personnel in DHS’s ever-escalating rendition and deportation programs,” said Emma Best, founder of DDoSecrets.
CyberScoop was able to verify numerous current Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency employees are listed in the data, along with some former leadership members who left the agency years ago.
The data goes back years, with various group names listed in the database making reference to COVID-19 planning and internal summits in 2023.
The hacktivists said the breach was a response to the promise of stepped-up operations from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement by DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
”On July 17th, Markwayne Mullin said he was ’turning up the heat.’ This is what happens to ICE when you do that,” said a spokesperson for the Department of Peace.
The spokesperson said they obtained the database from an Okta single sign-on service used at DHS. Okta said it was aware of the report.
“Okta is secure, and we have no evidence our data or systems were compromised,” an Okta spokesperson said.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
”This dataset is massive in terms of both size and impact,” said crimew, a Swiss hacker and journalist who has been indicted in the United States over past leaks and who created a search tool for the DHS data. “It provides an unprecedented look into the Department of Homeland Security’s organizational structure, highlighting which people do what work across multiple DHS agencies, including ICE.”
One researcher said the leak could prove valuable for Freedom of Information Act requests.
“Email addresses and phone numbers are indispensable tools for FOIA researchers, often making the difference between a vague records request that gets stonewalled and one that gets results,” Ryan Shapiro, executive director of Property of the People, said. “Given the Trump administration’s contempt for even basic transparency, the need for such tools is urgent.”
DHS has suffered notable breaches before, dating back to a 2014 breach that may have exposed the data of 390,000 then-current and former Homeland Security Department employees, job applicants and contractors. In 2018, DHS notified nearly 250,000 people of a breach at the department.
Earlier this year, Security firm GitGuardian said it discovered a public GitHub repository that exposed credentials for privileged AWS GovCloud accounts and internal CISA systems dating back to November 2025.
Greg Otto contributed to this story.
