Dive Brief:
- Monday, an anonymous hacker posted the details of 20,000 FBI employees online, shortly after releasing similar information for almost 10,000 Department of Homeland Security employees.
- The posted DHS information included employee names, official titles, departments, phone and fax numbers, state and country address information and official email addresses, the SITE Intelligence Group said.
- The DHS and the Justice Department are investigating the data dump, but said there was no indication that sensitive information was stolen.
Dive Insight:
The U.S. federal government has continued to grapple with a number of data security challenges. Last year, the Office of Personnel Management suffered an attack that exposed names, addresses, Social Security numbers and other sensitive information of 21.5 million current and former federal employees and contractors.
This information release comes shortly after the Government Accountability Office found DHS' Cybersecurity Protection System lacking and only partially meetings its objectives. Even though the data seems relatively harmless right now, the release should put government agencies on notice to take measures to further protect their systems.
Most of the information was likely culled from internal government directories, which include information like employees’ email addresses, phone numbers and job titles. It was unclear when the breach occurred, but the hack was reportedly motivated by support for Palestine.
"We are looking into the reports of purported disclosure of DHS employee contact information,” said S.Y. Lee, a DHS spokesman, according to a Reuters report. “We take these reports very seriously, however there is no indication at this time that there is any breach of sensitive or personally identifiable information."
