By Jana Winter and AJ Vicens
WASHINGTON, March 27 (Reuters) - Iran-linked hackers have publicly claimed the breach of FBI Director Kash Patel's personal inbox, publishing photographs of the director and other documents to the internet.
On their website, the hacker group Handala Hack Team said Patel "will now find his name among the list of successfully hacked victims." A Justice Department official confirmed that Patel's email had been breached and said the material published online appeared authentic.
The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The hackers did not immediately respond to messages.
Handala, which calls itself a group of pro-Palestinian vigilante hackers, is considered by Western researchers to be one of several personas used by Iranian government cyberintelligence units. Handala recently claimed the hack of Michigan-based medical devices and services provider Stryker on March 11, claiming to have deleted a massive trove of company data.
Reuters was not able to independently authenticate the Patel emails, but the personal Gmail address that Handala claims to have broken into matches the address linked to Patel in previous data breaches preserved by the dark web intelligence firm District 4 Labs. A sample of the material uploaded by the hackers and reviewed by Reuters appears to show a mix of personal and work correspondence dating between 2010 and 2019.
(Reporting by Raphael Satter, editing by Deepa Babington)
