ShinyHunters and ReliaQuest trade blows over claimed breach

Cybersecurity firm ShinyHunters has claimed that it breached infosec business ReliaQuest, but the latter maintains that it successfully thwarted the attack. The alleged breach was posted on ShinyHunters' leak site on August 23, including screenshots that allegedly showed access to ReliaQuest's Okta dashboard. However, there were no stolen customer data, ransom demands, or indications of customer impact, according to security firm SOCRadar.

Before this latest claim, ReliaQuest researchers had previously reported that ShinyHunters had registered company-name ".claims" domains as part of its social engineering campaigns. ShinyHunters responded by questioning ReliaQuest's alleged "hunting" of them. ReliaQuest has now confirmed that it was indeed the target of a social engineering attack on August 22, 2026, but disputes ShinyHunters' assertion that it compromised its systems.

The extent of the attack, according to ReliaQuest, was limited to temporarily exposing one employee's identity before its defenses blocked further access. No applications, systems, or customer data were accessed, and the company stated that it would provide no further comment beyond its official statement and a technical account of the incident on its website.

ReliaQuest's security measures, including device-trust controls and employee authentication processes, successfully stopped the attacker from using the exposed session to access company applications or systems.