Hackers have leaked the personal information of 22,175 FBI employees. Hackers are people who gain unauthorized access to computers and systems.
The same group was responsible for leaking records of 9,355 government employees from another department just yesterday – the information was posted to an encrypted text-sharing website called Cryptobin.
The group claiming responsibility for the breach says that it has downloaded 200GB of data from the US Department of Justice’s internal network. Some of this data includes even more sensitive information, such as credit card numbers and military emails.
According to technology news site Motherboard, the hacker used simple human engineering to bypass one of the DoJ’s layers of security.
Motherboard quoted the hacker, who said: “So I called up, told them I was new and I didn’t understand how to get past [the portal].
“They asked if I had a token code, I said no, they said that’s fine – just use our one.”
The Department of Justice was quoted by The Telegraph as saying:
“The department is looking into the unauthorised access of a system operated by one of its components containing employee contact information,”
“This unauthorised access is still under investigation; however, there is no indication at this time that there is any breach of sensitive personally identifiable information.
“The department takes this very seriously and is continuing to deploy protection and defensive measures to safeguard information. Any activity that is determined to be criminal in nature will be referred to law enforcement for investigation.”
A spokesman from the Department of Homeland Security said that it is “looking into the reports.”
“We take these reports very seriously, however there is no indication at this time that there is any breach of sensitive or personally identifiable information,” they said.