US Department of Justice allegedly hacked

An anonymous hacker has reportedly compromised the computer system of a US Department of Justice employee and stolen the contact details of over 20,000 apparent FBI employees and over 9000 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees.

The hacker shared details of his exploits with Vice's Motherboard blog.

He also claimed to have downloaded hundreds of gigabytes of data from the Department of Justice computers.

The list allegedly includes names, job titles, email addresses and phone numbers. The apparent DHS database was leaked over Twitter earlier this week.

Vice had confirmed the legitimacy of at least part of the databases by calling a large selection of numbers at random, reaching people or voicemail inboxes of DHS and FBI employees.

The attacker claims to have gained access to the system by first using a compromised email address of a DoJ employee to gain access to the database, and using social engineering to combine the compromised email account with a token code to access a virtual machine.

The DHS has issued a comment stating that it is investigating the reports, but that there is no indication at this time that any sensitive or personally identifiable information was leaked.

Image courtesy of Adam Thomas under CC