Iranian hackers have claimed to have hacked into the personal email account of FBI Director Kash Patel

An Iranian government-backed hacking group dubbed “Handala” said on Friday that it had hacked into the personal email account of FBI Director Kash Patel.

In a post on her website, Handala included several photos of a younger Patel, as well as a link to a cache of files that appeared to have come from Patel’s personal Gmail account.

“The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information, and we have taken all necessary steps to mitigate the potential risks associated with this activity,” an FBI spokesperson told TechCrunch in a statement. “The information in question is historical in nature and does not include any government information.”

The FBI said it is also offering rewards of up to $10 million for information related to the Hanzala hackers.

TechCrunch confirmed that at least some of the emails leaked by Handala were from Patel’s alleged Gmail account by verifying the information in the message headers. These message headers contain information from the sender that helps email delivery systems ensure that the email is real and not a spoof.

We used a tool to verify several emails in the leaked cache of files that Patel sent from his Gmail account. These emails contain cryptographic signatures that match the messages, which strongly suggests that the emails we examined are authentic. In some cases, Patel appears to have sent emails from his former Justice Department email address in 2014 to his Gmail account. TechCrunch found that emails sent from Patel’s Justice Department account also appeared to be authentic.

Files in the leaked cache appear to date back to approximately 2019.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reuters, which was the first to report the email leaks, said a Justice Department official confirmed the hack.

TechCrunch sent messages requesting confirmation of Patel’s Gmail email address exposed by the hackers, as well as a text message to a mobile phone number found on the resume that allegedly belonged to Patel. We did not hear back immediately.

Since the US-Israel war against Iran began in February, the Iran-linked Handala has intensified its hacking operations, most notably claiming responsibility for a devastating attack against medical technology giant Stryker, which destroyed tens of thousands of employee devices. The hackers also published the personal details of several people who are allegedly part of the Israel Defense Forces and local defense contractors.

In the wake of the Stryker hack, the FBI seized a few of Hanzala’s websites, which quickly came back online in new domains. US prosecutors formally accused the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security of running the Hanzala Group.

The hackers did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment, which was sent to a chat account that the hackers post on their website, as well as an email address owned by the group and published by the Department of Justice.

Updated to include a statement from the FBI, and the fourth paragraph was corrected to note that the emails were sent from Patel’s DOJ email address, not his FBI email address. ZW.