{"id":397275,"date":"2026-09-11T21:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T21:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/397275\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T21:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T21:32:08","slug":"florida-dmv-says-it-was-hacked-shortly-after-major-drivers-license-breach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/397275\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida DMV says it was hacked shortly after major driver\u2019s license breach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"anchor-67ae43\" class=\"body-graf\">Florida\u2019s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FLHSMV) said Friday that it\u2019s investigating a data breach, making it the second organization that hosts Americans\u2019 driver\u2019s license information to be hacked this month.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-4c524a\" class=\"body-graf\">The Florida announcement comes on the heels of another incident, in which a vendor that scans Americans\u2019 driver\u2019s licenses for private companies, IDscan.net, said it was investigating a major data breach of its own. Hackers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/tech\/security\/fbi-investigates-alleged-breach-ids-hackers-claim-hegseth-drivers-lice-rcna595871\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">claimed to have stolen<\/a> 160 million IDs from the company, including one from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, sparking federal investigations.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-9368cf\" class=\"body-graf\">While the two hacks do not appear to be related, they highlight how cybercriminals, whose jobs <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/tech\/security\/era-ai-hacking-arrived-rcna224282\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">keep getting easier thanks to AI<\/a>, can easily gain access to millions of Americans\u2019 extremely sensitive personal information.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-a5250b\" class=\"body-graf\">Specifics of what was stolen from the FLHSMV are scant. But the department said in a statement published to its website that the breach was \u201cconducted by an international cybercriminal organization.\u201d Law enforcement is investigating the hack, the agency said, and the breach has since been contained. It\u2019s unclear how long the hackers had access.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-3a0beb\" class=\"body-graf\">Last week, ShinyHunters, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ic3.gov\/PSA\/2026\/PSA260515\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">a cybercriminal group<\/a> that hacks targets for sensitive information and then extorts them for a payment to delete it, announced on its dark-web site that the \u201cFlorida DMV\u201d was its latest victim.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-3b57f3\" class=\"body-graf\">That website, viewed by NBC News, gave a deadline of Sept. 11 for Florida to negotiate a fee not to release hacked files. It included a single sample file, a screengrab of an image allegedly from Florida\u2019s Driver and Vehicle Information Database, that showed the alleged driver\u2019s license for late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a former Florida resident. NBC News was unable to verify the authenticity of the image, which includes Epstein\u2019s alleged Social Security number, former driver\u2019s license number and vehicles registered in his name.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-6478e3\" class=\"body-graf\">On Friday afternoon, after the FLHSMV published its statement, ShinyHunters deleted references to Florida. It\u2019s not clear why the posting was deleted in this instance, but Ian Gray, vice president of intelligence at the threat monitoring company Flashpoint, said that is often an indication that the state had reached out to the hackers to discuss a potential payment not to leak hacked information.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-b3428f\" class=\"body-graf\">\u201cWhen a victim is missing from a blog, it typically means that there was a negotiation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-0e0300\" class=\"body-graf\">The FLHSMV did not respond to questions on whether it was engaging with ShinyHunters.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-85268c\" class=\"body-graf\">On Sept. 3, independent journalist Brian Krebs <a href=\"https:\/\/krebsonsecurity.com\/2026\/09\/fbi-probes-service-selling-153m-drivers-licenses\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">published an investigation<\/a> that found a hacker group claimed to have hacked a driver\u2019s license scanning company and was selling access to a tool that could access millions of Americans\u2019 licenses.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-5301ac\" class=\"body-graf\">The company, IDscan.net, did not respond to requests for comment, but said on its website the next day that \u201can unauthorized third party may have accessed and\/or copied certain customer information stored within their accounts on the IDScan.net cloud.\u201d<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-e1a60d\" class=\"endmark body-graf\">An FBI spokesperson confirmed to NBC News that the agency is investigating that breach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida\u2019s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FLHSMV) said Friday that it\u2019s investigating a data breach, making&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-397275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}