{"id":39229,"date":"2026-03-27T20:20:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T20:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/39229\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T20:20:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T20:20:07","slug":"iranian-hackers-breached-kash-patels-email-but-not-the-fbis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/39229\/","title":{"rendered":"Iranian Hackers Breached Kash Patel\u2019s Email\u2014but Not the FBI\u2019s"},"content":{"rendered":"

Handala\u2019s second claim, however\u2014that it hacked the FBI\u2014seems, for now, to be fiction. All evidence points to Handala having breached Patel\u2019s older, personal Gmail account. Widely believed to be a \u201chacktivist\u201d front for Iran\u2019s intelligence agency the MOIS, Handala suggested on its website that the emails contained classified information, but the messages initially reviewed by WIRED didn\u2019t appear to be related to any government work. TechCrunch did find<\/a>, however, that Patel appears to have forwarded some emails from his Justice Department email account to his Gmail account in 2014.<\/p>\n

Handala, which cybersecurity experts have described to WIRED as an \u201copportunistic\u201d hacker group whose cyberattacks and breaches are often calculated more for their propaganda value than their tactical impacts, has nonetheless made the most of Patel\u2019s embarrassing breach. \u201cTo the whole world, we declare: the FBI is just a name, and behind this name, there is no real security,\u201d the group wrote in its statement. \u201cIf your director can be compromised this easily, what do you expect from your lower-level employees?\u201d<\/p>\n

Handala Hackers Put $50 Million Bounty on Trump and Netanyahu\u2019s Heads<\/p>\n

For further evidence of Handala\u2019s bombastic rhetoric, look no further than another post on its website earlier this week (we\u2019re intentionally not linking to it) that offered a $50 million bounty to anyone who could \u201celiminate\u201d US president Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. \u201cThis substantial prize will be awarded, directly and securely, to any individual or group bold enough to show true action against tyranny,\u201d the hackers\u2019 statement read, along with an invitation to any would-be assassins to reach out via the encrypted messaging app Session. \u201cAll our communication and payment channels utilize the latest encryption and anonymization technologies, your safety and confidentiality are fully guaranteed.\u201d<\/p>\n

That bounty, Handala explained, was posted in answer to a statement about Handala<\/a> published on the US Department of Justice website last week that offered $10 million for information leading to the identity or location of anyone who carries out \u201cmalicious cyber activities against US critical infrastructure\u201d on behalf of a foreign government.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur message is clear: If you truly have the will and the power, come and find us!\u201d Handala wrote in its response. \u201cWe fear no challenge and are prepared to respond to every attack with even greater force.\u201d<\/p>\n

In yet another post on its website this week, Handala also claimed to have doxed 28 engineers at military contractor Lockheed Martin working in Israel and threatened them with personal harm if they didn\u2019t leave the country within 48 hours. When WIRED tried calling the phone numbers included in Handala\u2019s leaked data, however, most of them didn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

Apple says no device with its Lockdown Mode<\/a> security feature enabled has ever been successfully compromised by mercenary spyware in the nearly four years since its launch. Amnesty International\u2019s security lab head, Donncha \u00d3 Cearbhaill, also says his team has seen no evidence of a successful attack against a Lockdown Mode\u2013enabled iPhone. And Citizen Lab, which has documented several successful spyware attacks against iPhones, says none involve a Lockdown Mode bypass, while in two cases its researchers found the feature actively blocked attacks against NSO Group\u2019s Pegasus and Intellexa\u2019s Predator. Google researchers, meanwhile, found one spyware strain that simply abandons infection attempts when it detects the feature is enabled.<\/p>\n

Lockdown Mode works by disabling commonly exploited iPhone features, such as most message attachment types and features like links and link previews. Incoming FaceTime calls are blocked unless the user has previously called that person within the past 30 days. When the iPhone is locked, it blocks connections with computers and accessories. The device will not automatically join nonsecure Wi-Fi networks, and 2G and 3G support is disabled. Apple has also doubled bounties for researchers who detect any Lockdown Mode bypass, with payouts up to $2 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Handala\u2019s second claim, however\u2014that it hacked the FBI\u2014seems, for now, to be fiction. All evidence points to Handala…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[16621,822,15043,3462,8525,34,17013,55,443,17012],"class_list":{"0":"post-39229","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-apple","9":"tag-cybersecurity","10":"tag-encryption","11":"tag-fbi","12":"tag-hacking","13":"tag-iran","14":"tag-privacy","15":"tag-russia","16":"tag-security","17":"tag-security-roundup"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116302998735406753","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}