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An Iranian-backed terrorist group known as “Handala” on Friday said it had hacked the email account of FBI director Kash Patel.
In a post on his website, Handala included several photos of a young Patel, as well as a link to a file that appeared to be from Patel’s Gmail account.
“The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s email, and we have taken all necessary steps to mitigate the potential risks of this activity,” an FBI spokesperson told TechCrunch in a statement. “The information in question is historical and does not affect the government.”
The FBI said it is also offering up to $10 million in rewards for information related to the Handala hackers.
TechCrunch confirmed that some of the emails downloaded by Handala came from Patel’s purported Gmail account by verifying the content of the text. These message headers contain information from the sender that helps email systems verify that the email is genuine and not a spoof.
We used the tool to verify several emails in the downloaded files sent by Patel from his Gmail account. The emails contained secret signatures that matched the messages, indicating that the emails we saw were genuine. In some cases, Patel appears to have sent emails from his former Justice Department address in 2014 to his Gmail account. TechCrunch discovered that emails sent from Patel’s DOJ account also appeared to be authentic.
The files in the download cache appear to be around 2019.
The Ministry of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reuters, which first described it Emails released, said the head of the Department of Justice confirmed the breach.
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Do you have any information about this Kash Patel violation? From a non-working device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram, Keybase and Wire @lorenzofb, or on email.
TechCrunch sent a verification message to Patel’s Gmail email address that was exposed by the hackers, as well as a text message to a phone number on the resume that allegedly belonged to Patel. We didn’t hear back right away.
Since the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran in February, the Iran-linked Handala has expanded its hacks, in particular. saying that he was the one who carried out the attack against medical technology giant Stryker itself wiped out thousands of workers’ tools. Hackers have also published information about several people they say are part of the Israeli Army and local security contractors.
Following the Stryker hack, The FBI seized several of Handala’s websiteswhich quickly came back online for new episodes. US critics say so the accused Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) operates the Handala group.
The hackers did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment that was sent to the social media account announcing the hacks on their website, nor did the group’s email published by the Department of Justice.
It has been amended to include a statement from the FBI, and corrected the fourth paragraph to note that the emails were sent from Patel’s DOJ email address, not his FBI email address. ZW.