Distributed Denial of Secrets, a nonprofit organisation that publishes leaked material, announced the release on Wednesday. The records contain names, work telephone numbers, email addresses, job titles and internal group memberships across several federal security agencies.
The department said it was aware of a potential security breach and was working to address the incident and protect its personnel. Officials have not publicly established how the information was obtained or confirmed the full extent of the exposure.
The collection, known as Icepick, covers more than 41,000 people, according to its publishers. It includes over 21,000 records associated with US Customs and Border Protection and approximately 6,600 linked to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, alongside personnel from other departmental divisions.
Employees associated with Homeland Security Investigations, US Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency also appear in the material. Some entries identify internal teams and access groups associated with sensitive law enforcement activities.
The disclosure extends beyond ordinary employee directories. Records reportedly describe organisational links to special operations, computer forensics, surveillance programmes and human intelligence work, raising concerns that outsiders could identify personnel whose assignments are not ordinarily public.
Certain entries refer to undercover activities and technologies used by investigators, including facial recognition and communications analysis systems. Such references do not independently establish that every listed employee operated those systems or participated in the activities identified.
Distributed Denial of Secrets said it received the information from an entity calling itself the Department of Peace. The entity claimed to have extracted the records through an Okta identity and single sign-on service used by Homeland Security personnel.
That account remains unverified. Okta said it had found no evidence that its own systems or customer data had been compromised. The distinction leaves unresolved whether any unauthorised access involved the identity provider itself, departmental configurations or another route.
The complete dataset has not been independently authenticated. However, portions of the information have been checked against existing records and confirmed with current or former departmental employees, lending credibility to at least some entries without validating the entire archive.
The publishers acknowledged that the collection might contain inaccuracies and omissions. Its contents should therefore not be treated as a complete or definitive register of federal security personnel, particularly where job descriptions or operational associations could be misunderstood.
Emma Best, a co-founder of Distributed Denial of Secrets, said the material could assist journalists, public records requests and congressional oversight. The group presented the publication as an effort to increase scrutiny of federal agencies and their activities.
The Department of Peace offered a different justification, arguing that authorities holding extensive information about members of the public should face greater transparency themselves. That argument does not resolve questions about exposing individual employees or operationally sensitive information.
Security specialists have warned that aggregated personnel records can facilitate impersonation, targeted phishing and attempts to map investigative networks. Even where individual names or professional contact details are already public, combining them with internal group assignments may reveal additional relationships.
The release also raises concerns about the safety of officers and their families. Homeland Security officials have previously cited threats against immigration enforcement personnel when defending measures intended to conceal officers’ identities during operations.
The publication follows separate incidents involving federal personnel information, including claims of compromised Federal Bureau of Investigation records. Authorities have not publicly established any connection between those episodes and the Homeland Security disclosure.
The searchable nature of the published records creates an additional concern because information previously scattered across departmental systems or individual directories can be examined collectively. Internal memberships may help establish connections between personnel, offices and investigative functions. However, the presence of a name in a particular access group does not necessarily demonstrate active participation in an operation. The available information also does not establish whether the alleged intrusion exposed passwords, classified documents or operational communications. Homeland Security has not disclosed a definitive number of affected employees or contractors.
The social media platform Bluesky has blocked links to the archive and an associated searchable website, saying the unauthorised distribution of contact information violated its rules. Posts discussing the disclosure remained available on the platform.
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