ShinyHunters Strike Again: European Commission Confirms 350GB Data Theft from Europa.eu
Summary
The European Commission has confirmed a major cyberattack on its Europa.eu web platform, with the notorious extortion group ShinyHunters claiming responsibility. Detected on March 24, 2026, the breach targeted cloud infrastructure hosting the Commission’s web presence, reportedly through compromised AWS credentials or a security misconfiguration.
ShinyHunters claims to have exfiltrated over 350GB of data, including mail server dumps, databases, confidential documents, and contracts. The group has already published samples on its dark web leak site, including a 90GB archive. The Commission stated that “immediate steps were taken” to contain the incident and that internal systems were not affected, though it acknowledged data was taken from public-facing websites.
This marks the second data breach disclosed by the European Commission in recent months, following a previous incident just two months prior.
Sources
- BleepingComputer — European Commission Confirms Data Breach
- SecurityWeek — European Commission Reports Cyber Intrusion
- The Register — European Commission Breach
- Infosecurity Magazine — European Commission Cloud Data
Commentary
ShinyHunters hitting the European Commission twice in quick succession is a damning indictment of the EU’s cybersecurity posture. The attack vector — compromised cloud credentials or misconfiguration — is depressingly common and entirely preventable with proper IAM hygiene, MFA enforcement, and infrastructure-as-code reviews. For an institution that literally writes data protection regulations (GDPR), being breached through basic cloud security failures is particularly embarrassing.
The “internal systems weren’t affected” line reads like damage control. 350GB of mail server dumps and confidential documents from the EU’s official web platform is a significant intelligence haul regardless of how you classify the systems. With ShinyHunters already publishing samples, expect this data to circulate widely across criminal and state-intelligence channels.
