Months after trying to bully Rockstar, ShinyHunters is now trying to pressure the US government

ShinyHunters, the hacking group that went viral in April after threatening Grand Theft Auto 6 developer Rockstar Games with a leak, is back with a much more dangerous scheme. This time, the group is brazenly going after the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Grand Theft Auto 6 fans may remember ShinyHunters' actions from earlier this year, when the group tried to pressure Rockstar into paying a ransom. Rockstar met the threat with a shrug, leading ShinyHunters to release private data on the game development studio. Once the information was out there, Rockstar's indifference made sense. Unlike the more recent GTA 6 leak, which was full of unauthorized gameplay clips, ShinyHunters's data breach was largely about Rockstar's financials. Evidently, Rockstar didn't mind people knowing exactly how much GTA Online and Red Dead Redemption 2 players were spending on their respective games. Spoilers: Some of the most successful games of all time are still making bank.

The numbers were interesting to groups like journalists and analysts — companies like Rockstar might share financial data during investor calls, but those disclosures are broad. Knowing that GTA Online makes around $1 million a day is slightly shocking in that context. For most people, though, ShinyHunter's leak was a big nothingburger.

Incidentally, the FBI issued a public service announcement about the ShinyHunters group a month before the hackers went after Rockstar. The prolific group had grown in notoriety after breaching institutions like Harvard University and Pornhub, and the high-profile security leaks were emboldening them to take on bigger targets.

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