On October 28th, local time, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was revealed to have suffered a major cyberattack. Detailed information on over 41,000 staff members was leaked and made public, including thousands of immigration enforcement personnel.
According to the BBC, the leaked information includes the names, work addresses, and contact numbers of employees of the Department of Homeland Security. It involves agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Customs and Border Protection agencies, along with descriptions of each person's job responsibilities within their respective agencies.
This data breach is the third incident of information leakage or cyber intrusion involving U.S. government agencies in recent weeks. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security stated, “We have been notified of this potential data breach and are working quickly and effectively to handle it.”
The spokesperson added: “We attach great importance to all security threats targeting our employees and law enforcement officers. We will do our utmost to ensure the proper protection of these individuals. If more information becomes available in the future, we will inform the public accordingly.”
This unprecedented leakage of public personnel information has been made public online. An organization called “Peace Department” obtained this batch of data from the Department of Homeland Security. Journalist and cybersecurity researcher Mia Kranu, along with the DDoSecrets website, publicly released the leaked data, which was stored in a database named “Icepick”.
Data shows that the largest number of people on the leaked list belong to the Customs and Border Protection, with over 21,000 individuals; nearly 6,600 belong to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Other records include personnel from the Homeland Security Investigations Agency, the Federal Protective Service, and even staff from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
The leaked documents exposed dozens of operational codenames that were previously not made public, as well as the agents who led and participated in these operations, along with some of the technical tools they used in their work.
According to an online statement by the relevant organization, the purpose of this leak was not to compile a list of Department of Homeland Security agents. According to Emma Best, co-founder of Distributed Denial-of-Service, the main goal of this action was to replace anonymity with accountability mechanisms.
This leak incident has significant impact, but simple surface appearances easily mislead people about its weight: It exposed officials responsible for regulatory secret operations, undercover operations, government inquiries into leaks, and the failed "BlueLeaks" investigation. Best said.
"Blue Leak" refers to a large-scale data leak event by U.S. police in 2020, where "Distributed Denial of Secret Service" also hosted the leaked data.
A spokesperson for "Peaceful Department" directly attributed this action to law enforcement actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
On July 17th, Minister of Land and Resources Security Mark Wen Marun stated that he would “increase efforts” in this regard, the consequences of which lie with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau. The spokesperson made this statement online on Wednesday.
The ‘Peace Department’ states that they obtained information about Homeland Security agents using a single-sign-on service called Okta.
Octa is a widely used cybersecurity tool that allows various organizations to control access to internal platforms, enabling only authorized personnel to access internal systems.
Oktar's spokesperson responded by saying that the company is aware of the relevant allegations, but stated, "Oktar systems are secure, and we have no evidence that our data or systems have been compromised."
Last month, the FBI was attacked by the hacker group ShinyHunters, resulting in the theft of personal information of thousands of agents. Recently, the website of the Federal Election Commission, which is responsible for making public campaign donation data, went offline temporarily due to suspected hacking.
Under the Trump administration's continuous efforts to arrest and deport individuals suspected of illegal residence, opposition to immigration enforcement in the United States is growing.
This year, several immigration enforcement operations turned into violent conflicts. Agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency fired at more than twenty people, resulting in at least nine deaths.
Two of these murders have attracted widespread attention. Alex Preti and Lenny Good were shot by ICE agents in Minnesota this year, and they were not the targets of this arrest.
When law enforcement officers from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau carry out their duties, they often cover their faces with masks and sunglasses. Although the law requires law enforcement officers to reveal their identities, such officers rarely do so voluntarily. Many American politicians have publicly demanded that the Department of Homeland Security enforce this regulation.
According to data from the Immigration Policy Institute, since Trump took office again in 2025, the United States has carried out nearly 1 million deportations. More than 70% of those deported had no criminal record.
