FBI Director Kash Patel is having a turbulent week.
First, teenage cyber criminals claimed to have stolen a massive trove of personal files from the bureau.
And now insiders say staff inside the FBI are fuming over the breach, with one warning that the “agency leadership is lost” - a direct dig at the FBI director who’s already repeatedly been accused of being in over his head.
Behind Tuesday’s breach is ShinyHunters, one of the most notorious hacking crews in the world, who have threatened to make the stolen data public next week.
Among the files in the alleged two to three terabytes of stolen data is sensitive work against Russian intelligence, Chinese spies and drug cartels, as well as personal data of thousands of agents, Reuters reported.
Michael McPherson, a former agent who is now senior vice president of security operations at cyber firm ReliaQuest, told the BBC that this presents “a security threat which cuts to the core of agent safety, particularly their families.”
Another former agent, who wished to remain anonymous, pointed to widespread shock that such a breach could happen at the FBI.
“You would think this information would not be internet-exposed,” he said, adding that such a bombshell leak is “disturbing.”
Fearing that their data is part of the leak, FBI staff are now rattled about the “sloppy and lazy security failures” that led to it, another former agent said. Current agents have reportedly started a group chat with some of their former colleagues to make plans to deal with the fallout.
“This is really bad for our undercover agents,” said one of the former agents included in that chat.
Another major source of embarrassment is that the bureau has apparently not figured out how to deal with a bunch of unruly teenage cyber criminals, as ShinyHunters is not regarded as a particularly sophisticated group, the BBC reported.
The breach is likely of interest to adversaries of the U.S. and hostile spies.
Eric O’Neill, a former FBI operative who founded the cybersecurity consultancy Nexasure AI, said: “I would be shocked if Russian intelligence isn’t knocking on their door and saying, ‘We want that stuff, hand it over’.”
Cynthia Kaiser, former Deputy Director of Cyber at the FBI, warned that the hackers have already lost control of some of the files.
ShinyHunters told Reuters on Tuesday the data it had was “very very very sensitive.”
The hackers said they had compromised several of the bureau’s internal services.
Since Patel took the helm of the FBI in February 2025, the director has faced backlash for his mass firings and use of government planes for private travel, and criticism about his competency. He was accused of excessive drinking and unexplained absences in an explosive report by The Atlantic in April that spurred a $250 million defamation suit from Patel, who denied all the allegations.
That same report cited several unnamed sources who described Patel having a “freak-out” when he struggled to sign into an internal system and assumed it meant he’d been fired.
Most recently, he defended the bureau’s loosening of hiring requirements regarding prostitution and bestiality.
