The Federal Bureau of Investigation is probing an apparent data breach of its recruitment systems by an extortion group claiming that "almost all" FBI agents and job applicants are exposed.
ShinyHunters, a black-hat hacker responsible for breaching the likes of Ticketmaster and Santander, said it had exploited a zero-day in PeopleSoft, an Oracle-owned HR management system which forms part of the FBI's recruitment infrastructure.
The FBI is yet to verify those assertions but confirmed it is aware of Shinyhunters' claims and is investigating.
In late 2025, Senator Mark Warner, Vice Chairman of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, warned that changes made by the Trump administration at the FBI had put its cyber defences at risk, saying between 25 and 45 per cent of agents working across cyber, counterterrorism, espionage and other critical missions had been reassigned to immigration enforcement
The latest incident comes less than two weeks after the bureau warned that attacks on shared services could have consequences across multiple organisations in its latest Cyber Strategy.
Ripple effect
