A hacker has extracted contact information belonging to 20,000 FBI employees and published via the Internet on Monday, according to CNN.
The data dump on the FBI employees came a day after the same person took responsibility for releasing similar information belonging to 10,000 employees of the Department of Homeland Security. Motherboard, an online news blog, was first to report the story.
The hacker or hackers apparently posted messages to Twitter. “FBI and DHS info is dropped and that’s all we came to do,” wrote someone with the Twitter handle @DotGovs. “Now it’s time to go. Bye folks! #FreePalestine.”
The information released doesn’t appear to be very sensitive, according to Motherboard. Most of it consisted of names, titles, phone numbers and e-mail addresses — some that were unavailable to the public. No personal information, such as social security numbers, appeared to be lost in the breach, an FBI spokesman told CNN.
Nonetheless, that the computer systems of the FBI and Homeland Security were infiltrated won’t do much to promote confidence in their tech skills. Motherboard reported the hacker or hackers successfully made off with the data after compromising the e-mail account of an employee of the Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI. The hacker then tricked another employee into providing a token that enabled access to a DOJ web portal. That allegedly led to the breach of three computers and eventually to the staff-information databases.
The FBI said it’s investigating.
