FBI reports new arrest in ShinyHunters case
The identity of the person detained and any charges have not yet been disclosed.
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The FBI has detained another person who US authorities believe is involved with the hacking group ShinyHunters. The arrest follows a hack of the FBI’s portal for applicants, in which sensitive personnel data may have been stolen.
FBI Director Kash Patel announced the arrest on social media on Friday. He described the person detained as an alleged accomplice of ShinyHunters, but gave no name, nationality or information about where the arrest took place. It is also not yet known what charges are being considered against the person.
At the end of September, ShinyHunters claimed access to the FBIJobs.gov website and said it had obtained data on almost all FBI employees and applicants. The US law-enforcement agency confirmed that there had been a cyber incident at a platform operated by an external supplier, but has not disclosed the full extent of the data stolen.
The group claimed, among other things, to have accessed personal and sensitive information. AP reported that some of the data made public appeared credible to researchers, but that this does not establish exactly which systems were breached or how many people were actually affected.
According to Reuters, Friday’s arrest is the third publicly reported detention since news of the hack emerged. Earlier, suspects in the Netherlands and Jordan were linked to the investigation. The FBI is working with foreign law-enforcement agencies because, according to the authorities, ShinyHunters operates internationally.
The FBI says the group has attacked more than 140 organisations since last year and received at least 70 million dollars in extortion payments. These are claims by the US law-enforcement agency; there is no fully public case file containing evidence and a judicial ruling on the group.
The main lesson for companies and governments concerns the role played by external suppliers. The FBI says the attack was carried out through a third-party platform, while the consequences were borne by the law-enforcement agency and its employees. The new arrest may provide information about the perpetrators and the infrastructure, but in itself says nothing about guilt or the eventual scale of the data breach.
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The arrest, the limited information about the suspect and the earlier FBI hack have been confirmed by Reuters, AP and the FBI. The scale of the data theft and the alleged criminal proceeds remain attributed to statements by the authorities involved.
- confirmed The FBI announced a new arrest on Friday in connection with ShinyHunters. — Reuters describes the statement by FBI Director Kash Patel. source
- confirmed The identity and charges of the person detained have not been disclosed. — AP reports that the identity and any charges were not immediately clear. source
- confirmed The FBI said the incident took place through a third-party platform. — This is stated in AP’s report on Patel’s statement. source
- confirmed The FBI links ShinyHunters to more than 140 organisations and at least 70 million dollars in extortion payments. — The FBI cites these figures in its own video statement; they are a claim by the law-enforcement agency. source
Editor's note
The new arrest and the FBI’s involvement have been confirmed. The suspect’s identity, the charges and the precise scale of the data breach remain uncertain; claims by ShinyHunters and the FBI have been attributed as claims.Sources
More on this in Dutch media
- AD — „shinyhunters fbi”
- RTL Nieuws — „shinyhunters fbi”
- FD — „shinyhunters fbi”