A hacker has told Motherboard that they have extracted 200GB of data from the US government, including confidential records pertaining to 20,000 FBI employees and 9,000 DHS employees.
The hacker says that they compromised the email of a Department of Justice employee, then called up the DoJ's tech support office and tricked them into providing broad access to the DoJ's systems.
Motherboard has seen some of this data and its initial investigation suggests that it is genuine, though it's not clear how sensitive the material is.
The hacker as promised to dump the data online.
On Sunday, Motherboard obtained the supposedly soon-to-be-leaked data and called a large selection of random numbers in both the DHS and FBI databases. Many of the calls went through to their respective voicemail boxes, and the names for their supposed owners matched with those in the database. At one point, Motherboard reached the operations center of the FBI, according to the person on the other end.
One alleged FBI intelligence analyst did pick up the phone, and identified herself as the same name as listed in the database. A DHS employee did the same, but did not feel comfortable confirming his job title, he said.
A small number of the phones listed for specific agents or employees, however, went through to generic operator desks in various departments. One FBI number that Motherboard dialled did go through to a voicemail box, but the recorded message seemed to indicate it was owned by somebody else. This also applied to two of the DHS numbers.
Hacker Plans to Dump Alleged Details of 20,000 FBI, 9,000 DHS Employees
[Joseph Cox/Motherboard]
(Image: Afghan HINO dump truck)
