Senior US Officials Impersonated in Malicious Messaging Campaign


FBI is issuing this announcement to warn and provide mitigation tips to the public about an ongoing malicious text and voice messaging campaign.

Since April 2025, malicious actors have impersonated senior US officials to target individuals, many of whom are current or former senior US federal or state government officials and their contacts. If you receive a message claiming to be from a senior US official, do not assume it is authentic. The malicious actors have sent text messages and AI-generated voice messages — techniques known as smishing and vishing, respectively — that claim to come from a senior US official in an effort to establish rapport before gaining access to personal accounts.

Read more…
Source: U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation Cyber Division


Sign up for our Newsletter
The latest news and insights delivered right to your inbox.


Related:

  • UK arrests five for selling ‘dodgy’ point of sale software

    December 12, 2022

    Tax authorities from Australia, Canada, France, the UK and the USA have conducted a joint probe into “electronic sales suppression software” – applications that falsify point of sale data to help merchants avoid paying tax on their true revenue. A Friday announcement from the Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement (known as the J5), states that ...

  • US Health Dept warns of Royal Ransomware targeting healthcare

    December 8, 2022

    The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a new warning today for the country’s healthcare organizations regarding ongoing attacks from a relatively new operation, the Royal ransomware gang. The Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center (HC3) —HHS’ security team— revealed in a new analyst note published Wednesday that the ransomware group has been behind ...

  • Four suspects cuffed, face extradition to US over tax refund scam plot

    December 6, 2022

    Four men suspected of plotting to commit wire fraud and identity theft have been arrested and now face extradition to America. It is alleged they conspired to break into US companies’ servers, steal people’s personally identifiable information (PII), use that info to file fraudulent tax returns to Uncle Sam, and collect victims’ tax refunds. In newly unsealed ...

  • Always Another Secret: Lifting the Haze on China-nexus Espionage in Southeast Asia

    November 28, 2022

    Mandiant Managed Defense recently identified cyber espionage activity that heavily leverages USB devices as an initial infection vector and concentrates on the Philippines. Mandiant tracks this activity as UNC4191 and we assess it has a China nexus. UNC4191 operations have affected a range of public and private sector entities primarily in Southeast Asia and extending to ...

  • US bans Huawei, ZTE equipment sales amid Chinese spying fears

    November 27, 2022

    The Biden administration has banned approvals of new telecommunications equipment from China’s Huawei Technologies and ZTE because they pose “an unacceptable risk” to US national security. The US Federal Communications Commission said on Friday it had adopted the final rules, which also bar the sale or import of equipment made by China’s surveillance equipment maker Dahua ...

  • Iranian Hackers Installed Crypto Miner in Federal Agency After Exploiting Unpatched Log4Shell Vulnerability

    November 25, 2022

    The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said Iranian hackers breached a federal agency that failed to patch the Log4Shell vulnerability and deployed a crypto miner. The Log4Shell vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228) is a critical remote code execution flaw on Apache’s Log4j logging library popular with Java developers. The breach that occurred as early as February 2022 impacted ...