ShinyHunters claims FBI data breach affecting employees and job applicants

Washington, United States. Digital extortion group ShinyHunters has claimed it breached the Federal Bureau of Investigation and obtained data on a large number of current and former FBI employees. The FBI said it was investigating claims of unauthorised activity affecting FBIjobs.gov.

Hackers cite FBI warning

In a statement posted on its dark-web site and in an online chat with Reuters, ShinyHunters said it targeted the agency in response to a May 2026 FBI announcement detailing the group’s methods and advising victims not to pay.

The group said it had obtained data on “almost ALL FBI Agents” and people who had applied for jobs with the bureau.

Sample data and website disruption

As evidence, ShinyHunters provided what it described as a screenshot of a vandalised FBI jobs website and information on about 5,000 agents, which it said was a sample of the wider data set.

Reuters could not verify the screenshot’s authenticity, although the jobs website appeared to have recently been disrupted. A message posted on Tuesday said FBIjobs.gov and the FBI Special Agent Applicant Portal were unavailable.

Information partially verified

The sample appeared to include agents’ names, home addresses, Social Security numbers, assignments and, in some cases, the names of family members.

Reuters partially verified details in the sample, including Social Security numbers, against credit bureau records and previously breached data held by dark-web intelligence firm District 4 Labs. In at least 10 cases, including that of FBI Director Kash Patel, Reuters found details that appeared to match. A person familiar with the matter said job descriptions in the data also matched in some cases.

Reuters could not determine the source of the data or whether it had been taken from FBI internal systems, as the group claimed. Attempts to contact people whose details appeared in the sample were unsuccessful.