A leak website was published Wednesday, showcasing internal data on more than 41,000 Department of Homeland Security employees and contractors after it was obtained by hackers who claimed to have breached an identity service used by the agency.  

The transparency nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets and the hacker maia arson crimew got the data from a hacktivist outfit known as the Department of Peace.

”The leak is extraordinary but deceptive in [its] simplicity as it identifies the officials responsible for overseeing covert and undercover operations, the government’s hunt for leakers and the failed BlueLeaks investigation — along with key personnel in DHS’s ever-escalating rendition and deportation programs,” said Emma Best, founder of DDoSecrets.

CyberScoop was able to verify numerous current Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency employees are listed in the data, along with some former leadership members who left the agency years ago.

The data goes back years, with various group names listed in the database making reference to COVID-19 planning and internal summits in 2023.

As of Thursday morning, the website hosting a searchable form of the data has been taken offline.

The hacktivists said the breach was a response to the promise of stepped-up operations from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement by DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

”On July 17th, Markwayne Mullin said he was ’turning up the heat.’ This is what happens to ICE when you do that,” said a spokesperson for the Department of Peace.

The spokesperson said they obtained the database from an Okta single sign-on service used at DHS. Okta said it was aware of the report.

“Okta is secure, and we have no evidence our data or systems were compromised,” an Okta spokesperson said.

DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

”This dataset is massive in terms of both size and impact,” said crimew, a Swiss hacker and journalist who has been indicted in the United States over past leaks and who created a search tool for the DHS data. “It provides an unprecedented look into the Department of Homeland Security’s organizational structure, highlighting which people do what work across multiple DHS agencies, including ICE.”

One researcher said the leak could prove valuable for Freedom of Information Act requests.

“Email addresses and phone numbers are indispensable tools for FOIA researchers, often making the difference between a vague records request that gets stonewalled and one that gets results,” Ryan Shapiro, executive director of Property of the People, said. “Given the Trump administration’s contempt for even basic transparency, the need for such tools is urgent.”

DHS has suffered notable breaches before, dating back to a 2014 breach that may have exposed the data of 390,000 then-current and former Homeland Security Department employees, job applicants and contractors. In 2018, DHS notified nearly 250,000 people of a breach at the department.

Earlier this year, Security firm GitGuardian said it discovered a public GitHub repository that exposed credentials for privileged AWS GovCloud accounts and internal CISA systems dating back to November 2025.

Greg Otto contributed to this story.

UPDATE: 10/29/2026, 9:30 a.m.: This story has been updated with details about the web-based database being taken offline.

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Trump administration budget chief Russell Vought told lawmakers Tuesday that he’s willing to work with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on re-staffing up the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, following deep personnel cuts and further proposed reductions in the fiscal 2027 budget blueprint.

Mullin said last week at a House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security hearing that he would like to hire 600 more people at CISA, similar to remarks he made earlier this month at another House hearing. President Donald Trump has cut or lost more than 1,000 from an agency that stood around 3,400-strong at the end of the Biden administration — cuts criticized by lawmakers in both parties.

At a House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government   hearing Tuesday, Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., asked Vought about Mullin’s CISA remarks.

“You don’t just flip a light switch on, and you got 600 folks over in CISA now. What’s the plan for getting CISA fully operational?” Amodei, who chairs the panel’s Subcommittee on Homeland Security, asked. “How do we make sure we have a robust, effective, cost-effective CISA force? Because I don’t think anybody thinks we have it now.”

Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said he hasn’t received a formal request from Mullin to increase CISA’s number of full-time employees, but knows that hiring isn’t instantaneous.

“He was not here when we developed this budget, so if he feels the need to have additional resources, we will work through that internally, and at the appropriate time, come up and brief you,” he answered Amodei. “I do think he’s in the process still of getting his arms wrapped around the department,” he said. Mullen became DHS secretary in late March.

“This is probably one of those things, particularly in the cyber world, you now have a year and a half of a new administration,” Vought continued, and referred to conservative complaints about how CISA handled election security and disinformation under Biden. “We saw this agency had major concerns with it in our four years outside of government and with new management, I think it’s now an agency, or could be an agency, that plays a very valuable part for DHS’s portfolio.”

Bringing hundreds of new CISA personnel on board could prove challenging for reasons beyond the usual bureaucratic hurdles and security clearance processes that slow any federal hires in the national security space. Past CISA employees and agency observers have said the way the Trump administration has purged personnel and treated those who have stayed could prove a further disincentive to future hires.

Acting CISA director Nick Andersen recently said that the agency has begun the process of hiring new CISA staffers, and expected to have nearly 200 job offers out by the end of this month.

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The Department of Homeland Security is bringing back a key cybersecurity information sharing effort with critical infrastructure, more than a year after the Trump administration shuttered an existing nerve center between government and private sector.

The Alliance of National Councils for Homeland Operational Resilience – Critical Infrastructure program, first reported by CyberScoop in January, is meant to replace the function of the Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council.

CIPAC was a federal advisory body that allowed agencies like the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the intelligence community to interact with key owners and operators of water, power, internet and telecommunications to coordinate on cyberattacks and digital vulnerabilities.

ANCHOR will fulfill a similar role.

“ANCHOR-CI will provide forums through which cybersecurity, law enforcement, intelligence, national security, and other government representatives at the federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial levels may engage representatives of private sector entities and critical infrastructure owners and operators in reviewing the current threat environment, discussing potential vulnerabilities, and forming recommendations on securing a more resilient critical infrastructure and cyberspace,” DHS wrote in a federal register notice set to publish July 1.

ANCHOR-CI will be managed by CISA, which will appoint members to the council from industry, trade associations, state and local governments and other sources.

The body will consist of four types of different councils: one focused on federally designated critical infrastructure sectors, cross-sector councils to deal with emerging threats like cyber attacks or zero-day vulnerabilities, critical infrastructure industry councils and regional coordinating councils.

As CyberScoop reported, a key difference between CIPAC and ANCHOR-CI will be the way key meetings will be exempt from public transparency laws.

“In recognition of the sensitive nature of the subject matter involved regarding the assessment and mitigation of security and operational risks through whole-of government coordination, and strong partnership with the private sector that is required to ensure the security and resilience of critical infrastructure, the Secretary hereby exempts ANCHOR-CI from The Federal Advisory Committee Act,” the notice states.

The disbanding of CIPAC under then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was part of a larger dismantling of DHS advisory bodies set up under previous presidential regimes. Critical infrastructure owners and operators felt blindsided by the move and many found themselves without access to the kind of federally-enabled threat intelligence and cybersecurity support that had become a staple of U.S. cyber defense over the past decade.

A source told CyberScoop that new Secretary Markwayne Mullin was sympathetic to concerns from critical infrastructure owners and operators that they felt abandoned by DHS under Noem’s leadership, and was determined to make efforts to repair that relationship.

The restoration of information sharing services under ANCHOR-AI is one part of that effort.

Representative Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, called ANCHOR “a welcome step” toward strengthening operational partnerships between industry and CISA at a time when China and other adversaries are using AI and other tools to target U.S. critical infrastructure.

“The abrupt elimination of CIPAC last year caused unnecessary confusion and strain in these coordination efforts, and I appreciate Secretary Mullin prioritizing this partnership moving forward and for recognizing the importance of rebuilding CISA’s cybersecurity workforce,” said Garbarino in a statement to CyberScoop.

According to a former CISA official, ANCHOR-CI gives the CISA director more authority over the makeup and direction of the organization than under CIPAC.

Bob Kolasky, who ran the National Risk Management Agency at CISA, said the new organizational structure for ANCHOR “really puts CISA  in the position of having authority over who participates,” a change from CIPAC, when the private sector and other sector risk management agencies were given autonomy to choose their representatives.

“Previous iterations of CIPAC and the way it was operationalized leaned heavily on the idea that private sector coordinating councils were self-governed and self-organized, and the DHS Secretary and the CISA Director…managed the overall partnership structure,” said Kolasky, now senior vice president of critical infrastructure at Exiger. “They were not given the authority to make decisions on who would participate in that partnership structure.”

Under previous administrations, CISA officials frequently partnered with industry to build trusted lines of communication and work on cross sectoral cybersecurity initiatives. Most of these efforts were voluntary – a reflection of the agency’s limited regulatory mandate but also of CISA’s view that they were the nation’s risk advisor, not its manager.

Kolasky said some there remain unanswered questions from the information released so far in the Federal Register notice, including how the CISA director would choose representatives and what role other sector risk management agencies would play influencing ANCHOR. He said “what is important is consistent processes” that ensure membership isn’t dependent on being in the good graces of a particular agency or administration.

“I want it to be a partnership structure between industry and government and not something that is completely operated and mandated by the government,” said Kolasky.

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