Massive Breach Allows Hackers to Steal Employee Data from the US Federal Agencies

An incident at the Federal Emergency Management Agency allowed threat actors to steal employee data from the US Customs and Border Protection and the disaster management office. The breach has allegedly triggered the removal of dozens of Federal Emergency Management Agency technology employees.

Citrix bug leads to breach

The incident occurred on June 22, when threat actors infiltrated Citrix virtual desktop infrastructure inside FEMA via stolen login details. The data was stolen from Region 6 servers, according to NextGov. The DHS security staff were informed of the incident on July 7. A week later, an unknown hacker used a high-level access account and tried to deploy virtual networking software to retrieve details. Mitigation began on July 16. 

In September, further mitigation actions were taken, including reframing FEMA Zscaler policies and restricting access to a few websites. According to Nextgov, an internal FEMA email was found that instructed all employees to change their passwords, but no other details about the incidents were mentioned in the email. 

About FEMA firings

The FEMA employee layoffs happened on August 29, after a routine inspection of the agency’s infrastructure, which revealed a flaw that “allowed the threat actor to breach FEMA’s network and threaten the entire department

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