Alleged Epstein hacker sold exploits to Hezbollah, informant says

A confidential informant told the FBI in 2017 that Jeffrey Epstein had a personal hacker, according to a document released by the Department of Justice on Friday. The document was released as part of the Department of Justice’s legally required effort to publish documents related to its investigation into the late sex offender. The document does not identify who the unnamed hacker was, but it does include several details about them. It is important to note that this document contains allegations from only the informant, not from the FBI directly, making the trustworthiness of the information and allegations unclear. The FBI declined to comment when reached by TechCrunch, and the Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment.

According to the informant, the hacker was an Italian born in Calabria and specialized in finding vulnerabilities in iOS, BlackBerry devices, and the Firefox browser. The informant, who served as a confidential informant, told the FBI that the hacker “was very good at finding vulnerabilities.” The hacker allegedly developed zero-day exploits—which are cybersecurity vulnerabilities unknown to the software vendor—and sold them to several countries. These buyers reportedly included an unnamed central African government, the U.K., and the United States. The informant also claimed that the hacker sold a zero-day exploit to Hezbollah, which paid him with a trunk of cash.

The details emerged following the Department of Justice’s announcement on Friday regarding the release of 3.5 million additional pages from the Epstein files. The newly released files, some of which are heavily redacted, include more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images. Because the FBI has not directly verified these claims, the document represents unconfirmed intelligence rather than established facts. The release of these files is part of an ongoing legal process, but the specific claims regarding the personal hacker and the sale of exploits to foreign governments and militant groups remain entirely unverified by federal investigators.

Why it matters

The release of 3.5 million pages of Epstein-related documents provides a rare, albeit unverified, glimpse into allegations of high-level cyber espionage involving zero-day exploits and militant groups.