Hackers from Iran broke into the personal email box of the head of the FBI

The Iranian government’s cyber intelligence

The website of the attack group, known as the “Handala Hack Team”, quipped that Patel “will now find his name on the list of victims we have managed to hack into”. An official at the US Department of Justice confirmed that Patel’s email had been hacked, and noted that the materials published online appear to be completely authentic. The FBI itself has not yet given an official response to the Reuters news agency’s request to comment on the incident, and the hackers for their part did not respond to further inquiries either.

Embarrassment for the FBI

Although it was not possible to independently verify all of Patel’s email correspondence, the personal Gmail address that the hackers claim to have breached matches the address linked to the head of the FBI in previous information leaks. This figure was confirmed by the intelligence company “District 4 Labs”, which specializes in monitoring the dark web.

An examination of a sample of the materials uploaded by the hackers reveals that the leak includes a mix of both personal and professional correspondence, spanning almost a decade – between the years 2010 and 2019. This hack, which targets one of the most sensitive senior officials in the American law enforcement system, illustrates once again the growing prowess of the Iranian cyber arms and is a considerable embarrassment for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.