Suspect arrested in FBI hack that exposed employee information
The hack exposed personal information from thousands of bureau employees.
The FBI arrested another suspected co-conspirator of the ShinyHunters hacking group, director Kash Patel announced on Friday.
"Our agents in the field have arrested another suspected co-conspirator of the ShinyHunters group – the group believed to be responsible for the recent FBIjobs.gov incident, which occurred on a platform managed by a third-party vendor," according to Patel.
The breach, first discovered in late September, was carried out by the cyber group ShinyHunters and targeted the FBI's job website, obtaining thousands of personnel records of its employees, according to the bureau.
"This arrest demonstrates the strength and reach of our efforts to protect Americans from cybercrime," Patel said.
After initially saying they would post the sensitive information, the group told reporters they recanted the threat.
On Monday, the FBI "removed" a contracting company that it said was primarily responsible for the breach that allowed the hack that exposed thousands of employees' data to cyber criminals, according to a statement from the top cyber official at the bureau.
“To date, our review has determined that the incident occurred as the result of a security failure of a platform managed by a third-party organization - after a contractor failed to implement a security patch explicitly issued to secure the platform," FBI Cyber Assistant Director Brett Leatherman said in a statement. "As such, the FBI has removed the contractor and taken all necessary steps to both mitigate any further risk and protect our workforce."
In late September, the FBI sent a notice to employees that the group had obtained employee names, addresses, personal and work contact information, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and emergency contact information, sources told ABC News. The bureau is operating as if every FBI employee’s personal information was compromised, the sources said.
The FBI said the impacted system, FBIJobs.gov, was unclassified.
The FBI also issued a warning for those who may be impacted, urging that they maintain situational awareness and not answer any suspicious calls. There will also be internal briefings for employees who have been impacted.
According to the notice described to ABC News by sources, the FBI said that employees should not talk to the media and if the media is "trespassing" employees should call 911.
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