By Raphael Satter
WASHINGTON, Oct 9 (Reuters) – A friend of the suspected thief of a massive cache of personal data from the FBI says he begged the teenager not to do it.
Adem El Adeb, 19, told Reuters that he tried to convince Saif al-Din Khader last month that breaking into the FBI would bring the weight of the US government down on his shoulders but that Khader would not be swayed.
“You’re suicidal,” El Adeb recalled telling Khader in an early September message exchange. He said he told the teen he was “crazy” and that he should drop the idea. “Not only once. Multiple times. I tried to advise him.”
The hack claimed by the ShinyHunters hacking group, which Khader is alleged to have played a key role in, has rocked the bureau.
EL ADEB, ALIAS ‘PRYX,’ SAYS HE HAS GONE CLEAN
Reuters has not independently verified the scope of the breach, but the FBI has told staffers it is operating under the assumption the stolen data pertains to all its employees, a person briefed on the matter told Reuters last month.
The FBI did not return a message seeking comment on El Adeb’s account. It has said it is aggressively investigating the ShinyHunters hack.
Khader, whom El Adeb says is 17, was taken into custody in Jordan on September 29 and is cooperating with the bureau’s investigation, people familiar with the matter have told Reuters. Attempts by Reuters to reach Khader, members of his family or representatives for him have been unsuccessful.
Reuters has spoken to a handful of former associates of Khader — whose alleged hacker nickname was Rey — including El Adeb, who is better known under his old hacker nickname, Pryx.
The two were publicly known members of the cybercrime group Hellcat, which emerged in 2024 and took responsibility for several attention-grabbing hacks, including a break-in at France’s Schneider Electric, where the hackers demanded $125,000 worth of baguettes as ransom.
Rey and Pryx were identified as Khader and El Adeb by the Israeli cybersecurity research firm Kela in a report circulated in March 2025 and reviewed by Reuters. The report tied Pryx to El Adeb in part by showing that Pryx’s criminal ventures shared infrastructure, software tools and communication channels with a security-focused website called Pato, whose guide once listed El Adeb as its author.
Reuters reached El Adeb through an email address listed in Kela’s report. In a video interview from the Gulf emirate of Ras Al Khaimah, El Adeb acknowledged being Pryx and identified Khader as Rey, but he said that, unlike his friend, he had put his cybercrime days behind him.
El Adeb, who chain-smoked the Emirati cigarette brand Manchester Red through the hour-long interview, said he quit cybercrime before he turned 18 and is now setting up a cybersecurity business called VulOne with a cofounder.
“I’m clean now,” he said.
El Adeb said he was born in Tunisia and that his parents moved to the United Arab Emirates for work. He said he and Rey met online when they were 11 or 12 and beginning to experiment with hacking. He said they bonded over their shared support for the Palestinian cause and that they vandalized websites to act out their preteen political sensibilities.
“We thought it was cool when we were kids,” El Adeb said. “But then we grew out of it. We started to think that hacktivism is cringe.”
EL ADEB ‘PROUD’ OF HIS CYBERCRIMINAL BACKGROUND
Less cringe, he said, was making money.
El Adeb said Khader and other young cybercriminals formed Hellcat and went on a digital rampage, breaking into organizations around the world. Analysts say the group was noteworthy for publicly humiliating victims, something El Adeb described as “trolling.” He declined to say how much he earned from Hellcat’s cybercrime spree.
Reuters could not fully corroborate El Adeb’s account of his past or his exchanges with Khader. El Adeb said he “nuked” most of their messages after Khader was detained. But his recollections of their relationship line up with published research from security professionals, interviews El Adeb has conducted as Pryx and a podcast featuring Pryx released earlier this year, in which he said he had left cybercrime.
Other young hackers have publicly claimed to have gone straight while allegedly continuing to hack and steal. In an interview last year, Khader said he had quit hacking. Pepijn van der Stap, another suspected ShinyHunters hacker, repeatedly told journalists he had put his days of theft and extortion behind him. He was arrested by Dutch police on September 15 and is being investigated over allegations that he tried to organize murders abroad.
Attempts to reach representatives for Van der Stap were unsuccessful.
El Adeb insisted he was out of the game, describing himself as a “retired threat actor.” But between drags of his cigarette, El Adeb said he felt no shame or regret over his hacking.
“I’m proud that I had this experience,” he said. “I’m actually very happy and proud that I had actual cybercrime experience in a field that is filled with people that claim they know stuff but they never actually experienced real hacking.”
(Reporting by Raphael Satter; Editing by William Mallard)
