FBI Director Kash Patel is now among the apparent targets of a hacking crew that Western researchers tie to Iran. The group calling itself "Handala Hack Team" says it broke into Patel's personal Gmail account and has posted photos and documents it claims came from his inbox, reports Reuters. A Justice Department official confirmed the account was compromised and said the material posted appears genuine. Reuters couldn't independently verify the full cache, but the email address matches one seen in earlier data breaches. Sample messages reviewed by the outlet span both personal and work-related correspondence from 2010 to 2019.
The photos also appear to be "years old," reports the AP, which details pics that show Patel "standing beside an antique sports car and another with a cigar in his mouth." Handala describes itself as a pro-Palestinian vigilante outfit, but Western analysts say it functions as one of several fronts for Iranian government cyberunits, per Reuters. Earlier this month, the group claimed it wiped a large trove of data from Michigan-based medical device maker Stryker, which it says spurred the FBI to confiscate some of its domains.
"While the FBI proudly seized our domains and immediately announced a $10 million reward for the heads of Handala hack members, we decided to respond to this ridiculous show in a way that will be remembered forever," the group wrote Friday on its website, per Axios. The outlet adds a caveat to Handala's assertions, noting that "groups like Handala are known to make exaggerated claims about the scale of their hacks and the information they've stolen." Neither the FBI nor the hackers immediately commented.
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