City Hall’s secret emails: What we’ve learned since hack of Lightfoot officials

A massive cache of hacked emails detailing the inner workings of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration was leaked to the public last month – apparently in response to the fatal police shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo.

The emails were posted online on April 19 by Distributed Denial of Secrets, a nonprofit whistleblower group similar to WikiLeaks that’s facilitated other recent high-profile data dumps.

The hacked files, which also include roughly 50,000 documents and nearly 750,000 images, were swiped during recent data breaches targeting Accellion, a firewall vendor whose dated file-sharing network was compromised by organized cybercriminals.

The email accounts contain header information to indicate they belong to Susan Lee, the former deputy mayor of public safety; Patrick Mullane, Lightfoot’s former deputy press secretary; Tamika Puckett, the city’s former chief risk officer; and Anjali Julka, the former Freedom of Information Act officer for the mayor’s office

Responding to inquiries about the hack, a spokeswoman for the city’s Law Department, said that there’s “no evidence” to suggest the files are genuine. She added that reporting on them “makes all of us less safe and encourages future bad actors to use nefarious means to gain information.”

Follow the Sun-Times’ latest reporting on the contents found in the hacked emails and public officials’ responses below.