A cyber-criminal group has claimed it stole highly sensitive medical and personal information belonging to thousands of FBI special agents, including results from blood and urine tests, in a breach the agency says it is investigating.
The group, ShinyHunters, shared samples of alleged “fitness-for-work” examinations with journalists. The documents seen by BBC News appeared to contain agents’ names, home addresses, telephone numbers, badge numbers, job titles and information about spouses, alongside medical notes and test results.
The samples included references to health concerns such as high cholesterol and blood in the urine, as well as allergy information. Records reportedly covered thousands of agents and appeared to include senior officials, including deputy directors.
Potential risks for personnel
Cybersecurity specialists warned that the exposure of medical details could create long-term risks for affected personnel. Etay Maor, vice-president of threat intelligence at Cato Networks, said medical data cannot simply be changed in the way compromised passwords can, making the alleged breach particularly serious if it affects a large workforce.
Jamie Akhtar, chief executive and co-founder of CyberSmart, said the hackers’ assertions should be approached cautiously. However, he said the reported material could be used in phishing attempts, identity fraud, impersonation, blackmail or operations directed at law-enforcement staff.
Professor Ciaran Martin, former head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, said that, if confirmed, the incident would rank among the most serious kinds of data breaches. Reuters has reported that some material concerns personnel involved in investigations connected with Russia, China and drug cartels, while 404 Media reported that information about a little-known FBI hacking unit may also have been exposed.
FBI investigates source of breach
ShinyHunters said it breached FBI systems on Monday and later published details of the alleged intrusion on its darknet site. The group initially suggested the data involved the FBI’s 38,000 current employees, but later claimed it held information on about 60,000 current and former staff. Those figures have not been independently confirmed.
The hackers said they exploited a weakness in an Oracle cloud storage system and accessed platforms including FBIJobs, the background-check system FBI BEAST, the medical-records platform FBI MedLink and FBI BICS, which contains investigative information. The group is demanding that the FBI retract an advisory issued in May, rather than seeking money, and says it will publish the full dataset within five days if its demand is not met.
In a statement posted on X, the FBI said it was actively and aggressively investigating the matter. The agency said it was working with third-party providers supporting FBIJobs.gov and was still determining whether its own systems were directly breached or whether a provider had been compromised.
Source: BBC News
