ICE List says website was hit just as it prepared to publish names of federal immigration staff leaked by an alleged whistleblower.

A website dedicated to naming ICE and Border Patrol employees is coming under a “prolonged and sophisticated” cyber attack after the Daily Beast revealed it planned to make public 4,500 names of federal immigration staff.

The founder of ICE List said the website was overwhelmed by malicious web traffic originating in Russia after the Beast reported that a huge cache of personal IDs had been leaked to the site by an alleged Department of Homeland Security whistleblower.

The Direct Denial of Service (DDOS) assault, which began on Tuesday evening and is still ongoing at the time of publication, saw a huge number of IPs simultaneously access the website of ICE List, a self-styled “accountability initiative.”

This has successfully overloaded the ICE List’s servers and is preventing people from accessing the site. The timing coincided with ICE List founder Dominick Skinner telling the Daily Beast he would make public the first tranche of names in the dataset, which was leaked following the shooting by an ICE agent of mom Renee Nicole Good.

  • wuffah@lemmy.worldEnglish
    121·
    4 hours ago

    I’m no expert, but I can think of a few reasons: maintaining an official signed source, data integrity, and complying with takedown regulations:

    Your Responsibilities as a Whistleblower

    Media and Public Disclosure

    Public disclosure receives the least protection under most laws and carries the highest risk. It may be protected in limited circumstances, such as when:

    • You reasonably believe disclosure serves the public interest
    • You’ve attempted other channels without success
    • There’s immediate danger requiring public warning

    Even then, protection is uncertain and depends heavily on specific circumstances and applicable laws.

    High risk along with public identification means the leaker probably wants to comply as much as possible to state and federal law. From the article:

    Skinner said he planned to publish “the majority” of verifiable names, while carving out exceptions for positions like childcare workers and nurses

      • wuffah@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        3 hours ago

        Well, it’s inaccessible because Russian state-sponsored hacking collective is DDoSing the leaker’s website. Why would someone go through the risky process of leaking sensitive federal data that doesn’t actually exist?

        I suppose it could be to spook ICE into withdrawal, but I don’t think that’s going to stop them given the tenacity of their extremely broad mandate and excessive deployments.

        Or, it could be to goad Russian state actors into a honeypot to uncover their state affiliations, but they are generally insulated from that as a matter of Russian operating procedure.

        I don’t see a possible benefit to faking this list. Could you provide an example?

          • wuffah@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            3 hours ago

            That’s a great example, and it probably falls under retaliation protections which I would not expect the US government to uphold at this time. So, anyone trying to access this website should definitely use TOR.

            However, the fact that a Russian state actor is successfully attempting to limit access is pretty telling that they and the Trump administration don’t want this information leaked. My guess is that they know this information not only exists, but is dangerous to their interests.