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I'm Jen Jeffcoat. Today is Thursday, October 29th, and we begin with breaking news following a major security breach at the Department of Homeland Security. Officials across the country are on high alert after a hacking group released the names, phone numbers and addresses of more than 40,000 DHS employees online. The data leak reportedly reveals the identities of agents and operatives from Customs and Border Protection, ICE, and the Homeland Security Investigations Unit, many of whom are currently working undercover. Mark Boyle has the latest on the investigation right now live. Good morning, Mark. This is a massive data leak that puts tens of thousands of
federal agents and even their families at risk. So what do you know about the hacking group behind this and how did it happen? Well, that is their goal. They are hacking the system and posting this information, perhaps to de-anonymize these families. Obviously, many woke up this morning in great anxiety. This group, Jen, calls itself the " Department of Peace," and they claim responsibility for stealing the personal information of 41,000 officials from the Department of Homeland Security. For context, DHS employs about 260,000 people. This is about 15% of the total staff. And, according to investigators, this database was stolen from the authorization service.
Employee names, office locations, contact information, and assignments-all of this became part of the leak. DHS is now trying to figure out the depth of the infiltration and whether they can quickly bring the situation under control. The hack appears to have affected employees of ICE, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Customs and Border Protection, and DHS headquarters. Hacking of government institutions has been happening for a long time. This year they have become much more frequent. We have already discussed them here in the national newsroom. Earlier this year, the FBI also suffered a major hack. Then the personal information of thousands of agents was exposed. We'll be following this breaking news from
Washington, updating the information here live. I'm Ultra Elwood Sharon. A data leak that exposed the personal information of tens of thousands of Department of Homeland Security employees. The activist group believed to be behind this hack has a clear motive. The apparent leak of data from over 40,000 Department of Homeland Security employees, many of whom work in immigration and border protection. According to those who facilitated the data leak, it contains employee names, their positions, offices, and contact information such as email addresses and phone numbers. So, how did this happen? This website, called Distributed Denial of
Secrets, which publishes hacked and leaked documents, says that they received copies of the data from the hacktivist group "Department of Peace." The website claims that the "Department of Peace" managed to bypass the single sign-on cloud service used by the Department of Homeland Security. They publish a quote that they say belongs to the hackers. On July 17, Mark Wayne Mullen announced that he was increasing the degree of tension. Here's what happens to ICE when you do this We're turning up the heat on the streets. Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen made the comment during a summer press conference days after Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in
Houston. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told us that the agency is aware of the potential breach and is actively working to resolve the situation quickly and effectively. We take all threats to the safety of our employees and officers seriously and will make every effort to ensure they are properly protected. The website that released the data claims it includes the personal details of officials overseeing the covert operations and says it should be used to hold them accountable. This situation is now part of what is becoming a trend of data leaks in federal government agencies. I advise you to get in touch first, while the choice is still yours. The FBI's Cyber Division is exposing the
Shiny Hunters hacking group days after they claimed to have stolen sensitive data from FBI employees and candidates. And at the Pentagon last month, officials discovered that a vulnerability in a file-sharing system allowed unauthorized users to access personnel data for nearly 9 months. A class action lawsuit suggests that 3 million people were affected. From Washington, Mutaz Elnashar, special reporting.
