The FBI has arrested an accused co-conspirator of a criminal hacking group that said last month that it had breached the bureau’s jobs portal and obtained sensitive and personal data on nearly all employees of the law enforcement agency, Director Kash Patel said Friday.
The arrest was the latest targeting ShinyHunters, the group that claimed responsibility for the hack, as the FBI continues a global investigation into the breach of its network, which Patel said “occurred on a platform managed by a third-party vendor.”
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“We will continue to work closely with our partners to disrupt what’s left of the ShinyHunters group and their associates, no matter where they operate,” Patel said in a statement.
The identity of the person arrested was not immediately clear, nor what charges they might face.
In a message taking responsibility for the hack and announcing the collection of sensitive information, ShinyHunters said it had taken action over false allegations contained in an FBI public advisory from May that described the organization as a “cyber criminal group specializing in large-scale data breaches and extortion.”
That advisory characterized ShinyHunters as “threat actors” who often “use their real or exaggerated claims of access to sensitive or personal information to prompt payment from victims,” commonly harass or threaten people and “may falsely claim to have sensitive or compromising information, including embarrassing photographs or videos of victims, which frequently do not exist.”
Experts said that although the data that appeared to be compromised was the type of personal information that is routinely accessed during a breach, the hack nonetheless had alarming national security implications given that it could expose agents and their families to extortion, swatting and other harassment and because the identities of spouses were also said to have been obtained.
