Hackers leak contact details of 20,000 FBI staff

The database of FBI staff appears to contain every employee up to surnames beginning “Je” in the alphabet, more than half of the 35,000 people that work for the agency. The Telegraph can confirm that the list appears to be real.

Ahead of the release, one of the hackers behind the breach told Motherboard that he accessed the data through a US Department of Justice email account. Without verifying his details the department gave the hacker a code to access the DoJ’s intranet, where he found the contact details and 1TB of data.

Along with the FBI and US Department of Homeland Security contact lists, the hacker managed to download 200GB of data. The data includes more sensitive information like credit card numbers and military emails.

There has been speculation that the attack was perpetrated by the same group that hacked the personal email account of John Brennan, the CIA director, in October. That group, called “Crackas with attitude” (CWA), broke into a US law enforcement portal and gained access to one or more databases of US government employees.

After the John Brennan hack the group released two alphabetical lists containing around 4,800 names. The data was also released from an account that had tweeted with the hashtag #FreePalestine.

But so far it is not clear if the latest attack was perpetrated by the same people.