Data of more than 40,000 US Homeland Security staff leaked, including immigration and border agency personnel

Details of more than 40,000 personnel working for the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including thousands involved in immigration enforcement, have been leaked to the public. The leak includes names, work addresses and phone numbers of DHS staff, along with descriptions of the work they do for each agency.

The leak website Distributed Denial of Secrets said on Wednesday it has released data on more than 40,000 DHS employees, including details about officials working in sensitive fields such as surveillance and human intelligence. Another report put the number at more than 41,000 personnel.

The non-profit data transparency group says the disclosure draws on information obtained by an entity calling itself 'Department of Peace'. Wednesday's disclosure is the third government data leak to have made headlines in the past month.

The DHS data includes names, phone numbers and email addresses of employees from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security Investigations, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and other DHS component agencies.

Also included in the data were job titles and email groups, which, among other details, showed which agents were assigned to special operations, surveillance jobs, computer forensics and undercover work.

The information was put online on Wednesday by a group called the Department of Peace alongside cybersecurity researcher and hacker maia crimew. The information was put in a database named Icepick and shared through a website hosted by Distributed Denial of Secrets.

The groups wrote in an online statement that the goal of the leak was not meant to be a directory of every DHS agent. Rather the aim was to replace 'anonymity with accountability', according to Emma Best, a co-founder of Distributed Denial of Secrets. Best said the hacktivist known as 'maia arson crimew' developed a search tool for the data that would allow the public to browse it, and that the tool would empower journalists, guide public records requests and boost congressional oversight.

Best added: 'The leak is extraordinary but deceptive in its simplicity as it identifies the officials responsible for overseeing covert and undercover operations.' In a statement included with the data, the Department of Peace said DHS employees 'have our information, so it's only fair that we have theirs' and that it hoped the data 'can be used to limit further harm by the DHS and supports all efforts in that direction'.

The Department of Peace said it accessed the DHS agent profiles through a single sign-on service called Okta. Okta is a popular online security tool that organisations use to ensure that only people with access to internal platforms are logging on. A spokeswoman for Okta said the company is aware of the claims being made, but said: 'Okta is secure, and we have no evidence our data or systems were compromised.'

A representative of the DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the entire data trove, but it was able to match personal information of about six DHS employees named in the leak to credit bureau records and breach data carried by the dark web intelligence platform District 4 Labs. In other cases, Reuters called three DHS employees directly and was able to confirm their phone numbers and other details. One said it was the first they had heard of a breach.

In several cases, the data tracked information available on DHS employees' LinkedIn profiles. But in others, the data revealed nonpublic data about internal DHS organization charts or previously undisclosed programs or operations.

In September, the hacking group ShinyHunters claimed the theft of a massive trove of data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including sensitive job details and medical information from thousands of bureau employees. Last week, the defense department was hit with a class action lawsuit following a breach that exposed data on millions of current and former military personnel. In recent days, the Federal Election Commission, which makes public political campaign donation data, was taken offline because of a suspected hacking attempt.

The Department of Peace in March claimed responsibility for hacking DHS and posting documents related to contracts with outside vendors, according to the material.