WASHINGTON, THURSDAY — The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, stated Wednesday (September 2, 2026) that it is investigating the hacking of millions of US and Canadian driver’s license records. The data was found for sale on the dark web. However, the FBI did not comment on the details of the investigation because it is ongoing.
The FBI investigation, reported by Cybernews, follows a report by independent journalist Brian Krebs. He discovered a dark web site selling digital scans of millions of driver’s licenses.
Initially, he received information about services advertised by new users on the Russian cybercrime forum, Exploit. Through the KrebsOnSecurity page, Krebs revealed that the service offered access to the digital scanning of documents belonging to millions of people in North America.
“The source told me because the owner of this identity theft service offered my Virginia driver’s license as a free sample in their initial sales thread on Exploit,” Krebs told KrebsOnSecurity.
The dark web, called Nexus, Krebs said, sold the identity scans of more than 170 million people in North America. The scans sold included 153 million driver’s licenses, 10 million ID cards, 3 million international travel cards, and 579,000 medical cards, including marijuana dispensary cards.
A quick search in Nexus, Krebs stated, shows that the majority of the data belongs to U.S. citizens. The search for Canadian driver’s licenses yielded approximately 1.1 million results. The largest concentration of data indicates that it originates from Ontario, with a total of 473,673 identities.
Krebs added that Nexus appeared to be updating the database containing the stolen data in real time, suggesting that the database was being populated through an ongoing data breach.
Krebs also cited representatives from New Orleans-based identity verification provider IDScan.net, who said they were investigating the matter.
Krebs said the dark web site offering the driver’s license data disappeared shortly after he published his report.
Zach Edwards, a researcher at the cybersecurity company Infoblox, stated that incidents like this have never occurred before, particularly regarding the vast scope of the data involved. He revealed that his driver’s license was also sold on that site.
Edwards stated, “that attack” has sparked national security risks, particularly for important figures. In addition, this incident creates risks of identity theft and fraud for tens of millions of people.
So far, Reuters has been unable to confirm the source of the stolen data. IDScan.net also did not respond to repeated messages from Reuters.
According to a Reuters report, if the data breach is confirmed, this violation could become one of the largest identity document leaks ever to occur in North America. (REUTERS)
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