The U.S. Justice Department and Homeland Security are currently investigating a massive hacking attack that revealed information on thousands of government agents.
A cybercriminal made threats to publish the sensitive data online, just as the nation was gearing for Super Bowl 50 last Feb. 7, Sunday. Following the NFL football game finals’ kickoff, names, email addresses, and job descriptions of over 20,000 FBI agents and 9,000 Homeland Security officers’ data appeared in a substantial data dump on the Internet
The list contained a header which read: “Long Live Palestine, Long Live Gaza” and the hashtag #FreePalestine, also included sensitive information on approximately 1,000 FBI employees working in intelligence analysis.
While the FBI did not respond to any requests for comment, Motherboard was able to obtain a statement from a DOJ spokesperson who said they are looking into the possibility of unauthorized access of its systems which contain the contact information of the FBI’s employees.
The DOJ further said there has been no indication of “any breach of sensitive personally identifiable information,” Ooyuz said
A statement from the hacker claimed the stolen data was obtained from a compromised DOJ email that was used to access the Justice Department’s portal, Wired reported.
The hacker tricked a department representative into disclosing a token code to the portal, where access to an online virtual machine opened up three different computers, including one belonging to the person whose email account had been compromised.
The hacker further claimed Sunday’s massive data disclosure would only be one in a number of “ongoing hacks against the United States government.”
This recent information reveal comes on the heels of the October hack attack against CIA director, John Brennan, when a group calling itself “Crackas with Attitude” broke into his AOL email, as well as the accounts of several other high-ranking government officials, including Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper.
