By: Raphael Satter
and Al Vicens
Reuters
WASHINGTON -The digital extortion group known as ShinyHunters said on September 22 [2026] that it had breached the Federal Bureau of Investigation and stolen data on a huge number of current and former FBI employees.
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The FBI said the agency "is aware of claims regarding unauthorized activity affecting FBIjobs.gov and is currently investigating.
..... In a statement posted to its dark-web site 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 filled an application with the FBI for a job."
...... As proof, a screenshot of a vandalized 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.
..... 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 September 22 [2026] said that both it and the FBI "Special Application 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 release 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 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 he job description in the date also matched in at least some cases.
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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.
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Cynthia Kaiser, is former FBI official, said breaches like the ones claimed by ShinyHunter were "unclaimed 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 sued forever," she said.
..... ShinyHumters 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 games developer Rock-star Games, the maker of "Grand Theft Auto," and a May [2026] intrusion centered on education tool Canvas that caused widespread disruption across U.S. schools. Earlier in September, [2026] AI company anthropic said it had caught Shinyhunters-linked hackers trying to use its tolls.
.... On September 20, [2026] the group told Reuters it had on to war against another notorious cybercrime group, cI0p, in a rare out of public score-setting.