The Federal Bureau of Investigation has reportedly told its agents and support staff that their personal information was stolen in a recent cyberattack that targeted the bureau’s job application portal.
As reported by MS NOW reporter Ken Dilanian over the weekend, the FBI has since declared a “cyber security incident” in an internal notification to staff, workers that their names, addresses, job titles, and their Social Security numbers were exposed.
The hacking group called ShinyHunters before told TechCrunch that they “have data on mostly all of FBI,” and a “substantial” amount of information on applicants who applied through the FBIJobs.gov portal.
A spokesperson for the FBI did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment on Monday, and a White House spokesperson also did not respond to an email asking if the bureau had declared an incident.
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The article, shortened and in plain language
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has reportedly told its agents and support staff that their personal information was stolen in a recent cyberattack that targeted the bureau’s job application portal.
The FBI has not publicly confirmed a breach beyond a statement last week, in which it said it was aware that a hacking group had claimed a cyberattack, but that the theft of data was “still undetermined.”
As reported by MS NOW reporter Ken Dilanian over the weekend, the FBI has since declared a “cyber security incident” in an internal notification to staff, workers that their names, addresses, job titles, and their Social Security numbers were exposed.
Several media outlets have since confirmed that some of the stolen data included medical information, such as records relating to blood and urine samples, as well as psychiatric reports.
The hacking group called ShinyHunters before told TechCrunch that they “have data on mostly all of FBI,” and a “substantial” amount of information on applicants who applied through the FBIJobs.gov portal. The hackers broke in by exploiting a vulnerability in an Oracle PeopleSoft server, which hosts reams of human resources information on agents and now-workers who applied through the portal.
Justin Sherman, a national security expert, called the data breach a “counterintelligence disaster” for the U.S. government in a blog post for Lawfare.
A spokesperson for the FBI did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment on Monday, and a White House spokesperson also did not respond to an email asking if the bureau had declared an incident.
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