The personal email account of FBI Director Kash Patel appears to have been hacked by the Iran-linked hacking group Handala.
The hacked materials, which total about 800 megabytes in size, have been published on the group’s website and include photos as well as emails primarily from the 2010s.
“Today, once again, the world witnessed the collapse of America’s so-called security legends,” the group wrote. “While the FBI proudly seized our domains and immediately announced a $10 million reward for the heads of Handala Hack members, we decided to respond to this ridiculous show in a way that will be remembered forever.”
The U.S. government had seized Handala’s web domains after the group launched a cyberattack that brought down the systems of U.S. medical equipment company Stryker. The new Handala domain is hosted at a .to address, the top-level domain for Tonga, an island nation in the South Pacific.
Handala’s announcement mocked Patel, whom the group says will “now find his name among the list of successfully hacked victims.” A Justice Department official confirmed to Reuters that Patel’s emails had been hacked and the material was authentic.
“The so-called ‘impenetrable’ systems of the FBI were brought to their knees within hours by our team,” the group wrote. “All personal and confidential information of Kash Patel, including emails, conversations, documents, and even classified files, is now available for public download.”
The website went on to declare, “The FBI is just a name, and behind this name, there is no real security.” The group also made threats about more hacks coming, writing, “If your director can be compromised this easily, what do you expect from your lower-level employees?”
The message ended with a dedication to the “martyrs of the Dena destroyer.” The U.S. attacked Iran’s Dena warship off the coast of Sri Lanka, far from Iran, killing 84 people. The hack on Stryker was dedicated to the victims of a missile strike against an elementary school on the first day of the Iran War, which reportedly killed at least 175 people.
The emails released by Handala include information about a 5-day hotel stay Patel booked in Port Au Prince, Haiti, in Feb. 2012, his acceptance letter for employment at the Department of Justice in 2013, and correspondence with landlords as he sought to find an apartment in Washington, D.C. in 2014.
Most of the emails appear to be from around 2010-2019, but there are some that look more recent, like a receipt for an American Airlines flight from Feb. 2022, when Patel flew from Las Vegas to Newark with a layover in Dallas.
There are also photos that show Patel playing hockey outdoors, smoking cigars, and some of the FBI director holding a child who appears to be an extended family member.
One of the emails from 2012 to Patel and others included a photo of Patel smoking a cigar with the text: “Our boy Patel kickin it Bollywood style.” That email included the subject line “From Bombay with love.”
Another email in the cache appears to be from Jaime A. Raich, whose email signature listed him as the deputy chief of the major crimes section at the DOJ, and appears to have sent an email in 2013 to Patel that included 10 photos from Havana, Cuba. The email also copied others at the U.S. Coast Guard and ICE.
“Please find attached 10 photos of Havana. I hope you enjoy them, and I’m looking forward to seeing your photos of Canada and Havana. Hope to see you all again soon,” the email reads.
It’s not clear what the photos, which are innocuous at first glance, were supposed to convey.
Gizmodo sent an email to the Gmail address that was breached, but we have not received a response at the time of publication. We’ll update this article if we hear back.
On Wednesday, Handala said that it had hacked sensitive information about senior Lockheed Martin engineers and gave them a 48-hour deadline to leave the Middle East, “otherwise, their homes would become missile targets.” Many of the homes on the purported list include names like “Tel Aviv Hilton.”
