Inside the Hacker Group Known as ShinyHunters and What They Want From Big Corporations

When it comes to hacking, there are groups that make their mission known as a larger plan to take down big tech or some other billion- or trillion-dollar industry. But what about the group known as ShinyHunters? What is it, and what do its members want after trying to reportedly hack into a program used by schools across the United States?

According to Fortune, a cyberattack from ShinyHunters affected thousands of schools and even universities and forced those institutions to shut down a widely used program that students use for schoolwork and studying. But, at its core, what is ShinyHunters? And, probably more importantly, what has the group said, if anything, about its overall plans?

ShinyHunters might be as widely known to the average person as other so-called hacker collectives or organizations, but, per the software company DoControl, Inc., ShinyHunters has been around since 2020, when it began targeting large companies with money in mind. Instead of being focused on some kind of wild conspiracies within the government or big pharma, ShinyHunters is reportedly all about money.

DoControl reported that ShinyHunters breached the online security for companies like Google, Louis Vuitton, Workday, and Adidas, among others. The goal? To collect data and sell it on the dark web. It might not be the group responsible for those "data leak" emails you get from time to time, but it has been responsible for stealing data on customers and selling it to other sources for a profit.

In 2024, per Skyhigh Security, ShinyHunters claimed to have 1.3 million terabytes of customer data from Ticketmaster, which the group listed on the dark web for $500,000. In 2026, ShinyHunters hacked Coinbase and demanded a $20 million ransom. For this particular hacker group, the name of the game seems to be money, regardless of any casualties in the form of ordinary people whose data they stole.

Back in 2020, when the group first began to show itself, there were some tech executives who doubted the group hadn't been around before, but that hasn't been confirmed.

Vinny Troia, CEO of the IT security firm Night Lion Security, said, per Wired, "What's interesting about this is how this group appeared out of nowhere and had all this new data for sale. I always find that as an immediate flag. Nobody just drops into the scene with all this stuff. So that's why I don't believe Shiny is a new player to this market."

We aren't living in a futuristic movie where hacker collectives are the norm for criminal masterminds, so it's not like there is a plethora of these groups well-known by most people. But another anonymous hacker group that has remained in the spotlight on and off throughout the years is the one known as Anonymous.

Are ShinyHunters and Anonymous connected at all, though? Despite both groups being able to breach firewalls and use technology to expose people, the goal for Anonymous is much different. Whereas ShinyHunters is all about a financial gain, Anonymous is made up of "hacktivists" instead.

According to Purdue University, Anonymous's objective has always been activism through hacking and has often been politically motivated in order to seemingly help people rather than steal from them.

Its motto, as seen in videos over the years, is, "We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us."