The FBI is investigating a reported cyber incident involving fbijobs.gov, its employment website, after the hacking group ShinyHunters claimed it had accessed the portal and obtained personal information linked to bureau employees.
The bureau said it was working with companies that support the website to assess the incident and reduce potential risks. Investigators had not determined whether the suspected entry point was a third-party provider or an FBI system.
Hackers claim they took employee data
ShinyHunters said the stolen material concerns thousands of current and former FBI employees. The group also claimed it was holding the information until the bureau withdrew a previous public statement about it. It later said it was trying to prevent the personnel data from spreading widely.
News organizations that reviewed portions of the alleged dataset described it as a much larger collection, reportedly between two and three terabytes. The material was said to include detailed work assignments for bureau personnel. The scale and full contents of the claimed trove have not been independently established.
FBI has warned about extortion claims
In a statement earlier this year, the FBI described ShinyHunters as a group that may use threats or inflated claims of access to pressure victims for payment. The bureau also cautioned that some claims about compromising material may be false.
The investigation comes amid other cyber incidents involving US law enforcement systems. In March, the FBI disclosed suspicious activity on an internal system containing sensitive information related to surveillance and investigations. Separately, a pro-Iranian hacking group claimed to have accessed an account belonging to FBI Director Kash Patel and posted older personal materials.
At the time of the FBI jobs-portal investigation, the recruitment website was offline while the agency and its providers worked on the matter.
