Iranian hackers claim breach of FBI director Kash Patel’s personal email account

A hacking radical backed by the Iranian authorities dubbed “Handala” said connected Friday that it has breached the idiosyncratic email relationship of FBI manager Kash Patel. 

In a station connected its website, Handala included respective pictures of a visibly younger Patel, arsenic good arsenic a nexus to a cache of files that look to travel from Patel’s idiosyncratic Gmail account. 

TechCrunch confirmed that astatine slightest immoderate of the emails leaked by Handala were from Patel’s alleged Gmail relationship by verifying accusation contained wrong the connection headers. These connection headers incorporate accusation from the sender that helps email transportation systems corroborate that an email is genuine and not a spoof.

We utilized a instrumentality to verify respective emails sent by Patel from his Gmail account, which contained cryptographic signatures that matched their email messages. These signatures powerfully suggest that the emails we checked are authentic. In immoderate cases, Patel appears to person sent emails from his FBI email code to his Gmail account. TechCrunch recovered that the emails sent from Patel’s FBI relationship besides appeared to beryllium authentic.

The FBI and Justice Department did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.

Reuters, which archetypal reported the email leaks, said a Justice Department authoritative confirmed the breach. 

TechCrunch sent messages seeking confirmation to Patel’s Gmail email code revealed by the hackers, arsenic good arsenic a substance connection to a cellphone fig contained successful a resume allegedly belonging to Patel. We did not instantly perceive back.

Since the U.S.-Israeli warfare against Iran started successful February, Iran-linked Handala has ramped up its hacks, astir notably claiming work for a destructive attack against aesculapian tech elephantine Stryker that wiped tens of thousands of worker devices. The hackers person besides published the idiosyncratic details of respective radical who are allegedly portion of the Israeli Defense Forces and section defence contractors.

Following the Stryker hack, the FBI seized a fistful of Handala websites, which rapidly came backmost online connected caller domains. U.S. prosecutors person formally accused the Iranian ministry of quality and information (MOIS) of operating the Handala group. 

The hackers did not respond to TechCrunch’s petition for remark sent to a chat relationship that the hackers publicize connected their website, arsenic good arsenic an email code owned by the radical that was published by the Justice Department.

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