ShinyHunters trades financial extortion for a reckless war of ego with the FBI

Th­reat hun­ters and re­sear­chers are alar­med by what they’ve seen in data ShinyHun­ters claims it stole from the FBI. Li­mi­ted sam­ples of the sto­len data con­tain FBI agents’ per­so­nal con­tact in­for­ma­tion, de­tails on fa­mily mem­bers, of­fi­ce and duty as­sign­ments and, in some cases, in­for­ma­tion on agency per­son­nel spe­cial­ties, mul­ti­ple sour­ces said.

“I am gra­vely con­cer­ned about the im­pli­ca­tions it opens up,” a re­sear­cher who has vie­wed and stu­died a sam­ple of the data told Cy­berS­coop.

“It’s a road­map for every s—y country, and drug car­tel, and in­sa­ne per­son to lo­ca­te exactly who in the FBI they have a grie­van­ce with, and show up at their home or at­tack a per­son close to them,” the re­sear­cher who re­ques­ted and was gran­ted anony­mity to share sen­si­ti­ve in­for­ma­tion added.

In a lengthy post on its data-leak site, the group clai­med it stole data on al­most every FBI agent and peo­ple who ap­plied for an agency job. The FBI jobs site, which was tem­po­ra­rily de­fa­ced by ShinyHun­ters, re­mains of­fli­ne as of Mon­day.

The FBI hasn’t con­fir­med the type or amount of data com­pro­mi­sed or at­tri­bu­ted the breach to ShinyHun­ters di­rectly. The agency said it is “ac­ti­vely and ag­gres­si­vely in­ves­ti­ga­ting” the in­ci­dent, the root cause and its alle­ged im­pact to FBI em­plo­yees’ per­so­nally iden­ti­fia­ble data in a sta­te­ment Wed­nes­day…