Hacker group ShinyHunters claims massive breach of FBI employee data

By Kerry Picket - The Washington Times - Tuesday, September 22, 2026

A well-known group of hackers said it breached several FBI-related services and stole data “on all FBI employees and applicants.”

ShinyHunters is a high-profile cybercriminal organization that’s been active since around 2020, known for large-scale data hacks and selling stolen databases on hacking forums and the dark web. It said the data includes FBI agents’ names, home addresses, phone number and information on their spouse.

The Washington Times reached out to the FBI for comment.

According to 404 Media, which first reported the breach, a representative from ShinyHunters provided a sample that appeared to contain the personal data of 5,000 FBI employees.

“We hacked the FBI. We hold data on all FBI employees and applicants,” the representative told the outlet.

The group said it migrated the data laterally from that site into the FBI’s managed servers on AWS GovCloud, and downloaded about 2 TB to 3 TB of data belonging to current, former, and prospective employees and applicants.

ShinyHunters said the intrusion started with a zero-day exploit in Oracle PeopleSoft, the HR platform.

Some of the sample phone numbers, when entered into an open-source intelligence tool, were confirmed to be the people with the same name as listed in the sample file.

Additionally, other records were cross-referenced in the data tool Darkside by 404 Media, and some of the phone numbers are associated with Department of Justice personnel.

ShinyHunters said they are not seeking an extortion payment from the breach, but instead want the FBI to retract statements from a May bulletin that described the group’s tactics.

ShinyHunters also defaced the FBI jobs website on Tuesday, before the bureau took it down.

The hackers stated on the page, “this site has been seized by ShinyHunters,” a similar phrase to the seizure notifications the FBI and other law enforcement tack on sites after taking them down.

The FBI jobs website now says, “Apply.fbijobs.gov and the Special Agent Applicant Portal are currently unavailable.”

This is the second known hack of an FBI system this year, after a previous breach in which unidentified hackers broke into an FBI system used to manage real-time wiretap and foreign intelligence surveillance warrants.