FBI Announces ShinyHunters Arrest
fbi.gov
fbi.gov
814 points | 7 days ago | 628 comments
Rendition, Extraterritorial Abduction, and Extraordinary Rendition are not useful inside Russia either. I read a news piece years ago the FBI tried to setup an office in Moscow (~1992 to ~1996). The Russians said "sure thing". Agents flew over, decided to take a walk around and check out the city. They were met by a group of allegedly KGB agents as a sort of "welcoming party" who worked them over in a street fight. It did not end well, consequently, the office in Moscow was closed and never again considered.
For those that missed the 404 article, apparently they hacked the FBI last week and had 3TB of data as well as a complete roster of everyone at the FBI. Pretty serious stuff and that's basically a death wish.
ShinyHunters then hacked the FBI Jobs page, allegedly stole data on all FBI employees and defaced the public site and demanded that the FBI retract their previous advisory. They said they weren’t going to release the data they stole but whether or not that’s believable is a different question.
This was very low-hanging fruit, that’s why the assistant director of cyber announced the arrest. Or maybe Ka$h was still hungover from emptying one of his personalised Whisky bottles and they couldn’t get him out of bed.
The FBI works in mysterious ways.
The Dutch authorities themselves do not credit the FBI specifically operationally btw.
https://www.politie.nl/headless-api/nieuws/2026/september/29...
> That's exactly how the best athlete model in the new FBI Cyber Strategy is meant to work: the partner with the strongest authority and access leads.
I think if you throw around intelligence jargon you should explain it to the people you try to address. Best Athlete model is a concept the CIA started using when they couldn’t get any further in the war on terror, around 2007 / 2008.
In this case it basically means:
CIA might have the human source. NSA might have the technical access. FBI might have the domestic legal authority. Dutch police might possess arrest jurisdiction.
So they let the Dutch police lead and if they fuck up they can blame them, while if they are successful they will credit themselves to the operational success, like seen here. Lazy but clever CIA mofos. I love em.
On a sidenote, that concept was put into place at the FBI around the same time by former FBI Director Mueller who was a USMC Vietnam veteran with operational experience.
You might have heard the name from being the special investigator for the alleged Trump/Russia connections or the Lockerbie bombing. Mueller passed this march and served the American people well.
If a man’s greatness is measured in how the enemies of the American people talk about him after his death. I think you did pretty well if Donald Trump publicly states he is glad you’re dead.
So now you know what that term means and where it came from.
> Arrests have a way of changing who is willing to talk, and seized infrastructure has a way of showing us who's left. The longer you stay in this, the more we learn about you. You know how to find us, and we know how to find you. I suggest you reach out first while the choice is still yours.
This is actually the most interesting part. Whatever Shinyhunters stole, it’s important enough the FBI is willing to negotiate with them over it. Past administrations would just dismantle the whole operation and put them and anyone involved in a hole for twenty plus.
But this administration takes bribes in the form of aeroplanes and is pardoning the worst cyber and other criminals to then use them as assets.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the president said if they can bend over the FBI and make them look like absolute amateurs, why can’t they work for us?
And with us, I don’t mean the American people. For ShinyHunters what they did was immature and strategically wrong.
Their egos didn’t allow them to just ignore the FBI and what they consider is an affront of what the group does and why.
But now they dabble in terrorism and that gets people involved you really don’t want breathing down your neck. This arrest is the beginning of the group’s end and they really don’t have any better option than making a deal with the FBI.
I doubt they have a military and/ or intelligence background,otherwise, they would know that even if they gave all the data to a foreign adversary like China or Russia, the kind of protection you get offered is always a lie.
You will end up like Snowden. They suck all the intel right out of you and then they take care of your "safety”, which means you’ll be stuck for the rest of your life in a small flat with all of your activities being surveilled by the local government, and some day you might get extradited for favours anyway, it’s like jail for life with a different-sized cell.
If they are clever they will cut a deal, sit five for show in minimum security, then get hired into the private sector.
No matter how good you think your opsec is, you can’t disappear anywhere on this beautiful planet if the US Government wants you dead or alive. And you all know countless examples that this is true.