Special agents’ blood and urine test results stolen in FBI hack

It was initially thought the breach affected the FBI’s 38,000 current employees, but the hackers now claim the number could be far higher.

The group says it underestimated the scale of the data theft and now claims to hold sensitive information on around 60,000 current and former FBI staff.

Jamie Akhtar, chief executive and co-founder of CyberSmart, said the hackers’ claims should be treated with caution but that the breach appeared to be extremely concerning.

“Such data could be used for highly convincing phishing, impersonation, identity fraud, blackmail or even operations targeting law-enforcement personnel, making the potential implications particularly serious,” he said.

The hackers, who communicate with reporters in English via the messaging service, Telegram, say they will publish the full dataset in five days unless the FBI meets their demands.

ShinyHunters is an international hacking collective that has been active since 2019 and has been linked to a number of high-profile cyber-attacks, including incidents affecting Rockstar Games and the education platform Canvas.

The group claims it exploited a vulnerability in an Oracle cloud storage system used by the FBI, gaining access to multiple platforms including FBIJobs, FBI BEAST, which handles background checks on employees and applicants, FBI MedLink, which stores medical records, and FBI BICS, which contains investigative information.

In a statement posted on X, the FBI said it was still trying to determine whether the hackers had breached its systems directly or compromised a third-party provider.