More than 41,000 employees and contractors of the US department of homeland security (DHS), including thousands of immigration and border enforcement personnel, have had their work details exposed in a major data leak amid growing protests and criticism over President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.The officers have faced scrutiny for wearing masks and sunglasses during operations and for failing to clearly identify themselves.The leaked information includes names, work addresses, phone numbers and job descriptions of personnel working across several agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a BBC report reveals.The leaked records were published in a searchable online database called “Icepick” on Wednesday. The activist group department of peace said it accessed the information through a single sign-on service used by DHS employees, while cybersecurity researcher Maia Arson Crimew and the nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets helped make the data public.
DHS acknowledges potential breach
A DHS spokesperson said the department was “aware of a potential breach” and was working to address the situation. The spokesperson added that the agency takes security threats against its employees and officers seriously and would provide further updates when more information became available.According to the leaked data, more than 21,000 personnel listed work for CBP, while nearly 6,600 are associated with ICE. Other records reportedly cover employees of homeland security investigations, the federal protective service and the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency.The groups behind the disclosure, however, said the database was not intended to be a comprehensive directory of all DHS employees. Rather the aim was to replace “anonymity with accountability”, according to Emma Best, a co founder of DDoSecrets.