Cyber-criminals claiming to have hacked the FBI say they stole highly sensitive medical and personal data belonging to thousands of current and former special agents. Samples seen by BBC News reportedly include blood and urine test results, doctors’ notes, names, addresses and badge numbers, creating risks of phishing, blackmail, identity fraud, impersonation and targeted attacks. The FBI has acknowledged the breach and is investigating whether its systems or a third-party provider were compromised.

The group, ShinyHunters, initially claimed information on 38,000 current employees had been exposed but now says the total could be about 60,000 current and former staff. It alleges that a vulnerability in an Oracle cloud storage system provided access to several FBI platforms, including those containing medical, recruitment, background-check and investigative information. The hackers have threatened to publish the full dataset within five days unless the FBI retracts an advisory they say offended them, although experts caution that some claims remain unverified.