Wave of ShinyHunters Extortion Drives Surge in Data Leaks

'Have I Been Pwned' Founder Troy Hunt Reviews Impact on People and Organizations Mathew J. Schwartz (euroinfosec) • May 15, 2026

The volume of data breaches that result in stolen personal data being leaked online has been surging.

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"Courtesy of the ShinyHunters, there's been just a very large amount of data on a very regular cadence published into the public domain," said Troy Hunt, founder and CEO of Have I Been Pwned. The free breach service ingests stolen data that gets publicly leaked or obtained by law enforcement, and directly notifies any subscribers when it finds their email address in the corpus of breached data.

The ShinyHunters digital extortion group, tied to the Western adolescent cybercrime collective known as The Com, has been on a crime spree. Members specialize in phoning up victims and tricking them into providing access to sensitive ...