The US government says it has been hacked – again

The Department of Homeland Security is investigating a hack of its platform, which is used by federal, state and local governments and law enforcement to share intelligence, with a top lawmaker warning that the information leak could put national security at risk.

The news sites Nextgov, which first reported news of the incident, and Bleeping Computer, reported that Department of Homeland Security officials were investigating a cyberattack on its Homeland Security Information Network, or HSIN, which allows state agencies and local officials to plan, coordinate, and share information and intelligence about major events and respond to emergencies.

Hackers reportedly broke into HSIN’s servers during late May and early June, potentially exposing information shared using the platform, according to Nextgov.

When reached by email, an unnamed DHS spokesperson said the department was “aware of a recent cyber incident involving a specific legacy, unclassified information-sharing environment.”

“We immediately took action to isolate the affected systems, mitigate the vulnerability, and initiate a comprehensive forensic investigation,” the statement read. The investigation is ongoing and the spokesperson declined to comment further.

It’s not clear what data was stolen or how much was taken, and DHS did not answer TechCrunch’s questions about the incident. A previously reported vulnerability during 2023 revealed that HSIN contained personal information that was shared between law enforcement in connection with the surveillance of Americans.

The incident involving HSIN puts new scrutiny on the government’s ability to defend the cybersecurity of its own systems, after more than a year of deep cuts across the federal government, including the Department of Homeland Security and its cybersecurity agency CISA, under the Trump administration.

Mark Warner, a Democratic senator representing Virginia who also serves as the ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that while the intelligence shared on HSIN is unclassified, the information is “highly sensitive, and its disclosure threatens national security.”

The HSIN platform supports the World Cup matches currently underway in the United States, and was also used last year to manage the response to the mid-air collision between an American Airlines plane and a US Army Black Hawk helicopter over Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people, Warner said.

The identity, affiliations and motives of the hackers who targeted HSIN are not known, but the hack represents the latest security vulnerability to impact the federal government over the past year.

Since the Trump administration took office in January 2025, the federal government has been hit with several major cybersecurity breaches, including the sharing of classified information and war plans via apps like Signal that have not been cleared for government use, a raid of federal databases of Americans’ personal information by members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and the public leak of a large number of passwords and credentials by a CISA contractor that exposed access to government cloud systems.

Earlier this year, the FBI notified lawmakers in Congress that it had to declare a “major cyber incident” after the phone numbers of targets being monitored by federal agents were disclosed, potentially giving those adversaries a potential advantage.

Do you know more about the DHS cyberattack on HSIN? We would love to hear from you. To contact Zack Whittaker securely, contact our Signal username zackwhittaker.1337 or email: zack.whittaker@techcrunch.com.

Updated with comment from the Department of Homeland Security.