‘I can think of a couple Pretti Good reasons!’: Hacktivists may have just cracked open ICE and exposed over 6,000 companies working with the DHS

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement website. The ICE is a federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. — (Image credit: Shutterstock)

A hacktivist group has hacked into the US Department of Homeland Security
The group allegedly stole document containing contracts between ICE and private companies
The stolen data has been posted online

A hacktivist group has claimed to have broken into systems belonging to the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and exposed sensitive files online.

The group, with the self-awarded name “The Department of Peace”, stole data from the Office of Industry Partnership that contained contracts between DHS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and over 6,000 private companies.

Among the companies contracted to work alongside DHS and ICE were Anduril, L3Harris, Raytheon, Palantir, Microsoft, and Oracle.

The Department of Peace

The files stolen by the Department of Peace have been posted online by nonprofit transparency collective, DDoSecrets. The site states that the documents include:

Company names
Company URLs
Names of various employees and sometimes their titles
Business and potentially personal addresses
Employee phone numbers
Employee email addresses
Tax identification numbers, including employer identification numbers and potentially SSNs
Other government contractor IDs, such as UEI numbers and CAGE codes
Some internal comments by DHS staff regarding things like updates to the information above

A screenshot of the DDoSecrets web page displaying the statement from the Department of Peace hacktivist group after the alleged leak of sensitive contractual information from the DHS and ICE. — (Image credit: DDoSecrets)

The justification for the hack relates to the killing of two US Citizens, Alex Pretti and Renée Good, by federal agents in Minneapolis. A statement from the hackers accompanying the data states, “Why hack the DHS? I can think of a couple Pretti Good reasons! I'm releasing this because the DHS is killing us and people deserve to know which companies support them and what they're working on.”

The hackers included an additional statement, “To the DHS: You are neither increasing the security of our homeland nor are you secure yourselves. How does it feel to be hunted? To the contractors: You wage war just to make a buck. I do this for free. How does it feel to be spied on?”

The contractual information stolen by the Department of Peace hacktivist group from the DHS and ICE hosted online. — (Image credit: Micah Lee)

The contractual information stolen from the DHS has been hosted online by Security researcher Micah Lee, and can be filtered by contractor and monetary amount.

Under the Trump administration, Federal agents from the DHS and ICE have launched one of the most aggressive deportation campaigns which has seen numerous US citizens illegally detained, and numerous persons deported without due process.

Detention centers on US soil have been criticized for having inhumane conditions due to overcrowding. The US has also made use of external detention centers and prisons with alleged human rights abuses including sexual abuse and torture, such as El Salvador’s Cecot prison.

The DHS and ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Any update will be posted here.

Via TechCrunch

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Benedict has been with TechRadar Pro for over two years, and has specialized in writing about cybersecurity, threat intelligence, and B2B security solutions. His coverage explores the critical areas of national security, including state-sponsored threat actors, APT groups, critical infrastructure, and social engineering.

Benedict holds an MA (Distinction) in Security, Intelligence, and Diplomacy from the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham, providing him with a strong academic foundation for his reporting on geopolitics, threat intelligence, and cyber-warfare.

Prior to his postgraduate studies, Benedict earned a BA in Politics with Journalism, providing him with the skills to translate complex political and security issues into comprehensible copy.

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