Ernst & Young data breach claimed by ShinyHunters extortion gang - BleepingComputer

Ernst & Young data breach claimed by ShinyHunters extortion gang By Lawrence Abrams July 27, 2026 11:12 AM 0 The ShinyHunters extortion gang has claimed responsibility for a recently disclosed Ernst & Young data breach, saying it obtained credentials for some of the company's systems via a supply-chain attack. Ernst & Young disclosed the breach earlier this month, saying a third-party support ticket system used by its IT personnel was compromised and support tickets that may contain client tax information were stolen. EY says it detected unusual activity on April 23 and determined that the attacker accessed the platform between March 28 and April 12, downloading multiple documents. "EY uses a third-party information technology service management platform to help EY information technology personnel provide support to EY teams performing tax-related work for clients," reads the EY data breach notification. "Support tickets submitted through the platform may include documents containing client tax information" The notification goes on to say that the stolen documents contained personal and financial information included in or used to prepare tax filings. However, the company has not disclosed the name of the compromised support system, the specific types of information exposed, or how many people were affected. At the time the breach was disclosed, no ransomware or data extortion group had claimed responsibility for the attack. Today, the ShinyHunters extortion gang added Ernst & Young to its data leak site, claiming it conducted the attack and threatened to release the allegedly stolen data if the company does not contact the group by July 31, 2026. Ernst & Young listed on the ShinyHunters data leak site Source: BleepingComputer The threat actors claimed to BleepingComputer that EY credentials were obtained through a supply-chain attack and used to breach the company. These stolen credentials allegedly allowed them to breach Ernst & Young's Jira, GitHub, and Azure environments. The threat actor would not identify the allegedly compromised third party or disclose what data was stolen. However, it claimed that the information EY acknowledged as compromised was exposed, along with more data. BleepingComputer has no way to verify the threat actor's claims independently, and Ernst & Young has not confirmed that ShinyHunters was behind the attack. BleepingComputer contacted Ernst & Young again Monday morning to ask whether ShinyHunters was behind the attack and whether the company had received an extortion demand from the group. We also asked EY to identify the compromised support system and disclose how many people were affected by the breach. Ernst & Young previously said it secured its systems, removed the unauthorized access, and notified federal law enforcement. Affected clients are being offered 24 months of identity monitoring and restoration services through Experian. Once attackers have valid credentials, only 37% of their actions are blocked Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply. The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments. Get the report Related Articles: NAIC says public data stolen in ShinyHunters' PeopleSoft breach Canadian pleads guilty to Snowflake cloud data-theft attacks Health-ISAC warns of rising ShinyHunters data theft attacks on healthcare ShinyHunters data leaks fuel $2,000 sextortion email scam Abbott probes two cyber incidents amid extortion claims