The notorious extortion group ShinyHunters claims to have hacked the Council of Europe and to have stolen nearly 300 gigabytes of data.
Europe’s leading human rights organization and an official United Nations observer, the Council of Europe was founded in 1949 and includes 46 member states, including 27 European Union countries.
On Sunday, ShinyHunters added the Council of Europe to its Tor-based leak site, threatening to release more than 297 GB of data allegedly stolen from the organization’s network.
The hacking group says it exfiltrated over 429,000 files across various departments, including HR, Secretariat, Parliamentary Assembly, and the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines & HealthCare.
The files allegedly include the payroll data of more than 10,000 Council employees from 2011 to 2026, over 14,000 CVs, contract and purchase order records, absence and illness reports, bank account information, performance evaluations, and payroll exports.
Additionally, the hacking group says the stolen data includes employee names, IDs, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, tax and social security information, and medical records.
ShinyHunters says it will release the stolen data publicly if the Council of Europe does not contact it by June 16 to begin negotiations.
“We are currently investigating the matter and assessing the situation. We have no further comment to make at this stage,” the Council of Europe said, responding to a SecurityWeek inquiry.
Since mid-2025, the extortion group has been linked to multiple high-profile intrusions, mainly targeting Salesforce customers, including Carnival, Canvas, Grafana, CarGurus, Panera Bread, and other incidents.
Last week, Google confirmed that a new ShinyHunters campaign exploited a zero-day vulnerability in Oracle PeopleSoft, likely impacting 100 organizations.
*Updated with statement from the Council of Europe.
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