A leak site publishes data on more than 40,000 Homeland Security employees, including staff in undercover and surveillance work

The leak website Distributed Denial of Secrets, a nonprofit group that publishes leaked material, said on Wednesday that it has released a dataset covering more than 40,000 Department of Homeland Security employees. The group said the material came from an entity calling itself Department of Peace.

The records carry names, phone numbers and email addresses, along with job titles and email group memberships. Customs and Border Protection accounts for more than half of the dataset, and about 10,000 records belong to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its Homeland Security Investigations unit. The rest covers the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Citizenship and Immigration Services and other parts of the department. The department employs a little more than 220,000 people, so the dataset covers roughly a fifth of the workforce.

The group memberships are the sensitive part. They show which agents were assigned to special operations, surveillance work, computer forensics and undercover work, and which staff had access to tools such as the Mobile Fortify facial recognition app and PenLink, a service that collects and analyzes data from phones and online services.

The department answered with a short statement. DHS said it was “aware of a potential breach and is actively working to address the situation swiftly and effectively,” and that it is working to protect its employees and will update the public when more information is available.

Reporting by TechCrunch pointed to the department's Okta single sign on system as the source of the data, with the records last updated on August 19, 2026. Reuters said it could not independently verify that claim. An Okta spokesman said, “Okta is secure, and we have no evidence our data or systems were compromised.” Reuters and TechCrunch each verified parts of the dataset by matching records against known department employees and contacting some of them for confirmation.

This is the third large government data leak to reach the news in a month. In September the hacking group ShinyHunters claimed it had stolen a large trove of data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including job details and medical information for thousands of bureau employees. Last week the Defense Department was hit with a class action lawsuit over a breach that exposed data on millions of current and former military personnel.