A suspected member of the hackers’ group ShinyHunters has been arrested in Jordan in recent days and is, according to US officials, cooperating with FBI investigators. Several arrests are now said to have been made.
The Jordanian authorities have detained Saif al-Din Khader, alias Rey, according to two US officials and another source familiar with the case. Some see him as the key figure behind the anonymous group.
ShinyHunters is a notorious cybercriminal group that has claimed responsibility for a series of large-scale data breaches. The group claimed last month that it had obtained data on virtually all FBI employees.
The FBI did not want to comment substantively on the arrest, but stated that the investigation into the recent cyber incident is continuing. According to the bureau, it is working closely with international partners and several suspects have now been arrested.
Last month ShinyHunters claimed it had stolen between 2 and 3 terabytes of data on FBI employees. They said they had exploited a new vulnerability in Oracle PeopleSoft, a software package for human resources management.
A second suspected member of the group, a 24-year-old man from Amsterdam, was arrested in the Netherlands on 15 September. The suspect, named as Pepijn van der Stap, had already been arrested in 2023 and sentenced to four years in prison for hacking and extorting various Dutch companies, including the Gelderland university of applied sciences HAN and ticketing company Ticketcounter. The latter was extorted for €250,000.
Van der Stap was released from prison this year and was hired by Neo Security, a company that helps organisations find vulnerabilities in their cyber security. Police say the Dutchman is also suspected of attempting to arrange two murders abroad.
ShinyHunters, incidentally, denies that he is involved with the group and has called the Dutch police “incompetent”.
ShinyHunters claimed that the attack on the FBI website concerned highly sensitive information about thousands of employees and job applicants. The FBI has not confirmed this, but did launch an investigation into the alleged breach.
The group said it had hacked the FBI out of dissatisfaction with an earlier warning issued by the US law-enforcement agency. In that warning, ShinyHunters was described as a cybercriminal group engaged in large-scale data theft and extortion.
The FBI has now publicly warned that the investigation into the group is continuing. According to the bureau, since last year more than 140 organisations have been hit by attacks linked to ShinyHunters, and the group is believed to have obtained at least $70 million in extortion payments. If Saif al-Din Khader cooperates with the FBI, the entire group could be dismantled.
ShinyHunters says it will not make public the data it claims to have obtained from the FBI. According to the group, the hack was intended as a protest against an FBI warning about ShinyHunters’ methods. The hackers are now calling the incident a “marketing campaign”.
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