Hacker stole personnel data about thousands of Homeland Security employees, including CBP and ICE agents


Personally identifiable information belonging to thousands of U.S. Department of Homeland Security employees has been published online after a hacker stole reams of data in a previously undisclosed breach at the government department earlier this year.

The breach includes names, job titles, and work contact information, such as email addresses, cell phone numbers, and office locations, of more than 40,000 people who work for the federal department, including border and immigration agents, cybersecurity staffers, and senior department officials.

A hacker who goes by the handle Department of Peace claimed they obtained the data from an Okta single sign-on system used by Homeland Security to allow employees and contractors across its various agencies to log in to its central network. The Okta system also contains IT and log-in records associated with the employees’ user account, including details about which systems and internal apps they are permitted to access.

Read more…
Source:  TechCrunch News


Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox


Related:

  • States vie for Israeli cyber security investment as CyberGym heads downunder

    February 20, 2017

    State governments are jostling to win a major cyber security investment from the multibillion-dollar Israeli government-owned electricity company, as the business implications of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s first Australian visit begin to take shape. Ofer Bloch, chief executive of the Israel Electric Corporation (IEC), was in Australia with the Prime Minister’s accompanying delegation of business leaders ...

  • Study reveals cybersecurity readiness gaps in US oil and gas industry

    February 16, 2017

    A survey of US oil and gas cybersecurity risk managers indicates that the deployment of cybersecurity measures in the industry isn’t keeping pace with the growth of digitalization in oil and gas operations. In a study from the Ponemon Institute – The State of Cybersecurity in the Oil & Gas Industry: United States – just ...

  • Government Needs To Take Immediate Actions To Strengthen US Cybersecurity, GAO Says

    February 14, 2017

    Testifying before the House Subcommittee on Research and Technology, Committee on Science, Space and Technology today, Gregory C. Wilshusen, Director, Government Accountability Office (GAO) Information Security Issues, warned GAO “has consistently identified shortcomings in the federal government’s approach to ensuring the security of federal information systems and cyber critical infrastructure, as well as its approach to protecting ...

  • Cybersecurity alliance promoting intel-sharing seeks to expand

    February 14, 2017

    Hackers have probably had a harder time slipping past your security software, thanks to an alliance between some of the top vendors in the industry. The Cyber Threat Alliance, a group of security firms that often compete, says its efforts to share intelligence on the latest hacking threats have been paying off. Rivals including Fortinet, Intel Security, ...

  • Incident Response Plans: A Comparison of US Law, EU Law and Soon-To-Be EU Law

    February 3, 2017

    The best way to handle any emergency is to be prepared. When it comes to data breaches, incident response plans are the first step organizations take to prepare. In the United States, incident response plans are commonplace. Since 2005, the federal banking agencies have interpreted the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act as requiring financial institutions to create procedures for ...

  • Pentagon Servers Flawed, Easy to Hack

    February 1, 2017

    The U.S. Department of Defense could be at risk of being attacked by hackers quite easily, one security researcher warns. According to ZDNet, who cites Dan Tentler, founder of cybersecurity firm Phobos Group, several misconfigured servers run by the DoD could allow hackers easy access to internal government systems. That includes foreign actors eager to find ...