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:
- Report: Aussie biz Azimuth cracked San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone, ending Apple-FBI privacy standoff
April 14, 2021
Australian security firm Azimuth has been identified as the experts who managed to crack a mass shooter’s iPhone that was at the center of an encryption standoff between the FBI and Apple. Until this week it had largely been assumed that Israeli outfit Cellebrite was hired to forcibly unlock an encrypted iPhone 5C used by Syed ...
- Man Arrested for AWS Bomb Plot
April 12, 2021
A Texas man has been charged with plotting a bombing of Amazon Web Services in a quest to allegedly “kill off the internet.” Seth Aaron Pendley was arrested in Ft. Worth after allegedly attempting to get an explosive device from an undercover FBI employee in a sting. The feds were alerted to Pendley after a concerned ...
- 623M Payment Cards Stolen from Cybercrime Forum
April 9, 2021
The Swarmshop cyber-underground “card shop” has been hit by hackers, who lifted the site’s database of stolen payment-card data and leaked it online. That’s according to researchers at Group-IB, who said that the database was posted on a rival underground forum. Card shops, are online cybercriminal forums where stolen payment-card data is bought and sold. Researchers said ...
- US adds seven Chinese supercomputing organisations onto Entity List
April 9, 2021
In another move aimed at restricting the development of Chinese technology, the US Commerce Department has added seven Chinese supercomputing entities to its Entity List for allegedly supporting China’s military efforts. The newly added entities that are companies include the Shanghai High-Performance Integrated Circuit Design Center, Sunway Microelectronics, Tianjin Phytium Information Technology. The remaining organisations are ...
- Man jailed for trying to buy chemical weapon online able to kill ‘hundreds’ of people
April 7, 2021
A man has been jailed for trying to buy a chemical weapon online capable of killing “hundreds” of people. On Tuesday, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) announced that Jason William Siesser, a resident of Missouri, will spend 12 years behind bars in federal prison without the possibility of parole. The 46-year-old tried to buy two and ...
- Ransomware gang leaks data from Stanford, Maryland universities
April 3, 2021
Personal and financial information stolen from Stanford Medicine, University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB), and the University of California was leaked online by the Clop ransomware group. The threat actors obtained the documents after hacking the universities’ Accellion File Transfer Appliance (FTA) software used to share and store sensitive information. Data stolen in the attack targeting Stanford Medicine’s ...