An unidentified foreign hacker broke into the FBI’s field office in New York in 2023 and compromised files related to the bureau’s investigation into the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to Reuters.
The newswire cited a source familiar with the breach, as well as court documents, and reported that the hack took advantage of a server at the Child Exploitation Forensic Lab in the FBI’s New York Field Office that was left inadvertently vulnerable by an FBI special agent working on the case. The breach “included combing through certain files pertaining to the Epstein investigation,” according to a court document.
An FBI spokesperson said that the investigation is ongoing. “Following the 2023 cyber incident, the FBI contained the affected network and determined the incident to be an isolated one. The FBI restricted access to the malicious actor and rectified the network,” the spokesperson said in a statement sent by email to TechCrunch.
A source told Reuters that the hacker did not realize they had broken into the FBI until the agents asked them to join a video call where they showed their credentials to the hacker.