FBI investigating claim hackers have stolen details of all its agents. The hackers claim they have every agent's name, role, badge number and personal details. by BBC NEWS The FBI is investigating a claim by a cyber-crime group that it has stolen sensitive information on all bureau staff - around 38,000 people. The hackers, Shiny Hunters, says it has every agent's name, role, badge number and personal details including home address, phone numbers and spouse information. Professor Ciaran Martin, the former head of the UK's National Cyber Security Centre, said - if confirmed - it was "as serious as it gets when it comes to data breaches." In a statement posted on X, the FBI said it was aware of the claim and the agency was "actively and aggressively investigating the matter". The criminals claim to have breached the FBI's servers on Monday night and began contacting reporters on Tuesday sharing samples and screenshots of the stolen data. The BBC has seen a small portion of the data, which appears to be genuine. According to Reuters, some of the data contains details about officials' job assignments, including sensitive work against Chinese spies, Russian intelligence and drug cartels. ShinyHunters is an international collective of hackers, believed to have originally started in France. It has been behind a number of high-profile breaches including on Rockstar Games in April and a highly disruptive hack on education platform Canvas in May. The group claims to have found a vulnerability in the Oracle cloud storage system used by the FBI to breach multiple systems including FBIJOBS, FBI BEAST, which does background checks on employees and applicants, FBI MedLink, which holds agent's medical records and FBI BICS, which holds investigation information. In its message on the dark web, the group said it did not hack the FBI system for money. Instead, the cyber-criminals are asking the agency to retract an advisory that it issued in May about the gang, saying it was "offended" by its characterisation. That FBI's public service announcement described ShinyHunters as "threat actors" who often "use their real or exaggerated claims of access to sensitive or personal information to prompt payment from victims". "They target major companies across tech, finance, and retail, often stealing millions of customer records at once," the advisory said. ShinyHunters said it would give the bureau one week to correct or remove what it says are false allegations or they would publish the full databases. The FBI did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the BBC. In its statement on X, the agency said it was trying to determine whether or not the hackers had breached its systems or a third party. "We are actively and aggressively investigating this matter and working closely with those third-party providers that support FBIJobs.gov to mitigate any and all risk," the post said. In a statement to the BBC, a cyber-security expert said it was a "retaliation attack", which demonstrated that "no organisation is safe from the group". "The group clearly wants to control the narrative around their activities, ensuring nothing is said that could dent their reputation," said William Wright of Closed Door Security. Meanwhile Andrew Brandt of cyber-security firm Huntress said it may provoke the FBI to track down and prosecute members of the hacking group. "ShinyHunters must feel pretty confident they won't get caught to threaten a government agency like this," he said.

ShinyHunters hackers say they breached FBI, stole data on bureau employees. 23 Sep 2026, 02:41 pm WASHINGTON (Sept 22): The digital extortion group known as "ShinyHunters" said on Tuesday that it had breached the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and stolen data on a huge number of current and former FBI employees. The FBI said the agency "is aware of claims regarding unauthorised activity affecting FBIjobs.gov and is currently investigating." 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. Building Malaysia's next-generation energy workforce As Malaysia advances its industrial landscape and accelerates towards a low-carbon future, the national economic imperative has shifted. Attracting investments and building state-of-the-art infrastructure are vital but their ultimate success hinges on having a competent, future-ready workforce capable of operating and sustaining the industries of tomorrow. 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 vandalised FBI job site and what the group said was information on roughly 5,000 agents it said was a sample of the overall stolen data set. Job site disruption. 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." The data sample appeared to contain information about FBI agents' names, home addresses, Social Security numbers, their assignments and, in at least some cases, the names of their family members. Reuters was able to partially verify the authenticity of the information by running the details, including the Social Security numbers, against credit bureau records and previously breached data preserved by the dark-web intelligence firm District 4 Labs. In at least 10 instances - including in the case of FBI Director Kash Patel - Reuters found details that appeared to match. A person familiar with the matter said that the job descriptions in the data also matched in at least some cases. 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. Past thefts were harmful. Cynthia Kaiser, a former FBI official, said breaches like the ones claimed by ShinyHunters were "incredibly harmful" because they could be used by criminals to expose and put pressure on the people investigating them. Kaiser, now senior vice president at cybersecurity firm Halcyon, noted that an old leak dating back to 2016 was still occasionally used today to harass FBI agents. "Once that information is stolen, it is used forever," she said. 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. News of the FBI breach was first reported by the news outlet 404 media. Uploaded by Liza Shireen Koshy

FBI hack scare: ShinyHunters claim data on 'almost all' agents, spouses and applicants stolen. * Reported by: Naman Trivedi * Updated: Sep 23, 2026, 03:02 IST ShinyHunters claims it breached the FBI and stole sensitive data on almost all agents, their spouses and job applicants, while the bureau has not publicly commented. The cybercriminal group ShinyHunters has claimed it breached the Federal Bureau of Investigation and stole sensitive information on almost all FBI agents, along with people who applied for jobs at the agency. The group made the claim on its dark-web leak site and in an online chat with Reuters, saying it had stolen data on "almost ALL FBI Agents" and FBI job applicants. ShinyHunters said the attack was not financially motivated and was carried out in response to a May 2026 FBI announcement that detailed the group's methods and advised targets not to pay. The FBI has not commented on the alleged breach so far. Hackers claim terabytes of FBI data stolen. The hackers reportedly said they breached an Oracle PeopleSoft server commonly used by human resources departments and recruiters to store job applicants' personal information. They then allegedly moved into an Amazon-hosted government cloud containing information on FBI agents and applicants. ShinyHunters said it had taken terabytes of data but did not specify what it would do with the information if the FBI does not remove the report it objects to. As evidence of the alleged breach, the group shared what it described as a screenshot of a vandalized FBI jobs site and a small sample of stolen data. Reuters could not verify the screenshot's authenticity, although the FBI jobs site appeared to have experienced recent disruption. A message on Tuesday said the site and the FBI Special Agent Applicant Portal were "currently unavailable." Reuters was able to partially verify some of the allegedly stolen personnel information by checking names, postal address details and Social Security numbers against credit bureau records and previously breached data preserved by District 4 Labs. In at least nine cases, the details appeared to match. However, Reuters could not establish where the information came from or whether it had been stolen from FBI systems as ShinyHunters claimed. The alleged theft of personal information belonging to FBI agents and their families could pose a counterintelligence risk, as such data could potentially be used for coercion or extortion. ShinyHunters has previously been linked to major cyberattacks, including alleged thefts involving Rockstar Games and education technology platform Canvas. Earlier this month, Anthropic said it had disrupted activity linked to the group. The FBI breach claim comes after another reported intrusion into an FBI system earlier this year involving systems used to manage real-time wiretaps and foreign intelligence-gathering warrants. FBI Director Kash Patel's personal email account was also reportedly hacked and leaked by the Iran-backed group Handala.