Iran-linked ​hackers have publicly claimed the breach of FBI ‌Director Kash Patel's personal inbox, publishing photographs of the director and other documents to the internet.

On their website, the hacker ​group Handala Hack Team said Patel "will now find ​his name among the list of successfully hacked ⁠victims." A Justice Department official confirmed that Patel's email had ​been breached and said the material published online appeared authentic.

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[–] 51 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Apparently it was just Gmail:

Reuters was ​not able to ⁠independently authenticate the Patel emails, but the personal Gmail address that Handala claims to have broken into ​matches the address linked to Patel in previous ​data breaches ⁠preserved by the dark web intelligence firm District 4 Labs. Alphabet-owned Google, which runs Gmail, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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  • [–] 54 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Matches the address linked to Patel on previous data breaches

    So the director of the FBI is regularly subject to data breaches? Am I reading that correctly?

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    I think it's less that he is personally being hacked, but rather he's using common public services which do.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    It’s Gmail. If Gmail is the weak link then he didn’t get hacked, the entire world got hacked.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    Yes in this case it was targeted at his account. I was referring to the "previous data breaches" in which "the address [was] linked to Patel." To me a data breach is when a company is targeted and the attackers gain access to a data set. Those data sets are often just lists of customer personal information. Like names, shipping addresses, phone numbers, emails, birthdays, and things like that. Then that leaked info can be used by future bad actors to target and individual.

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