ShinyHunters hackers say they breached FBI, stole data on bureau employees
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FILE PHOTO: A tour bus drives past the FBI headquarters in Washington, U.S., February 3, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
By Raphael Satter and AJ Vicens
WASHINGTON, Sept 22 (Reuters) - The digital extortion group known as "ShinyHunters" said on Tuesday that it had breached the Federal Bureau of Investigation and stolen data on a huge number of current and former FBI employees.
The bureau did not respond to repeated messages seeking comment on Tuesday.
In a statement posted to its dark-web site and during an online chat with Reuters, ShinyHunters said it had targeted the FBI in response to a May 2026 agency announcement that detailed ShinyHunters’ methods and advised targets not to pay. It said it had stolen data "on almost ALL FBI Agents, and individuals who filed an application with the FBI for a job."
As proof, the group offered what it said was a screenshot of a vandalized FBI job site and what it described as a small sample of its stolen data.
Reuters could not verify the authenticity of the screenshot, but the job site did appear to have experienced recent disruption. A message posted to the site on Tuesday said that both it and the FBI "Special Agent Applicant Portal" were "currently unavailable."
Reuters was able to partially verify the authenticity of some of the allegedly stolen FBI personnel information by running the names, postal address details, and Social Security numbers against credit bureau records and previously breached data preserved by the dark-web intelligence firm District 4 Labs.
In at least nine cases, Reuters found that the details appeared to match. However, the news agency could not establish where the data came from, or whether it had been stolen from the FBI's internal systems as the hackers claimed. Attempts to reach the people whose details were in the sample data were unsuccessful.
ShinyHunters is one of the world's most notorious and attention-seeking hacking crews. Its recent break-ins include the purported theft of millions of business records from video game developer Rockstar Games, the maker of "Grand Theft Auto," and a May intrusion centered on education tool Canvas that caused widespread disruption across US schools. Earlier this month, AI company Anthropic said it had caught ShinyHunters-linked hackers trying to use its tools.
On Sunday, the group told Reuters it had gone to war against another notorious cybercrime group, cl0p, in a rare bout of public score-settling.
(Reporting by Raphael Satter; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
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