Key facts
- Hackers claim to have stolen sensitive psychiatric and medical records of FBI personnel.
- The stolen data includes employee details, assignments, and sensitive work against foreign adversaries.
- A blood and urine test document and a mental health evaluation were among the stolen files.
- The breach is considered a serious counterintelligence risk.
- The FBI is investigating the reported breach.
FBI personnel data recently stolen by the ShinyHunters hackers includes sensitive psychiatric and medical evaluation records, according to the hackers and documents reviewed by Reuters. The group, one of the world's most notorious and attention-seeking hacking crews, first said they had breached the FBI on Tuesday. In the hack, they obtained granular details about bureau employees and their assignments, including sensitive work against Chinese spies, Russian intelligence, drug cartels and others. The breach has already rattled the bureau, but now risks turning into a serious counterintelligence risk, said Eric O'Neill, the former FBI operative who founded the cybersecurity consultancy Nexasure AI. O'Neill said the presence of medical data was a sign that the hack was approaching the same kind of magnitude as the 2015 intrusion into the Office of Personnel Management, which exposed millions of Americans' sensitive clearance information, allegedly to Chinese intelligence. He added that the data would be a powerful magnet for hostile spies. The FBI declined to comment on the records. In a statement issued Thursday, the bureau said it was "aggressively investigating" the reported breach. ShinyHunters circulated the medical files to a small circle of reporters earlier this week after announcing it had broken into the FBIjobs.gov site and stolen what it claimed was 2 to 3 terabytes of data. The BBC earlier on Friday reported that a blood and urine test document was among the sample, but the presence of other sensitive files, including a mental health evaluation and other records, has not previously been reported.