US Homeland Security chief reports breach at FEMA, fires 23 employees

Earlier DU thread: Noem terminates 24 FEMA workers for failing to address cyber vulnerabilities

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Source: Reuters

US Homeland Security chief reports breach at FEMA, fires 23 employees

Reuters
Fri, August 29, 2025 at 5:12 PM EDT
2 min read

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Friday that there had been an IT breach at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the American disaster response agency that has been buffeted by deep cuts and is slated for elimination.

Noem's statement gave few specifics about the nature of the breach except to blame FEMA's staff, two dozen of whom she said she had fired.

Noem said the hack threatened "the entire Department and the nation as a whole" but at the same time said that "no American citizens were directly impacted." She added: "No sensitive data was extracted from any DHS networks."

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News of the FEMA breach - and the mass firing purportedly connected to it - follows an open letter of dissent against the agency's leadership signed by scores of current and former FEMA employees. The letter warned Congress that the inexperience of top appointees of President Donald Trump's administration could lead to a catastrophe on the level of Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged the Gulf Coast of the United States 20 years ago.

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Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/dhs-chief-noem-fires-two-211242780.html