- The FBI published a new announcement, warning about ongoing attacks
- In the attacks, the crooks are impersonating senior US officials on both federal and state level
- In many cases, the attackers are sending cloned voice messages
Cybercriminals are impersonating senior US officials in highly sophisticated smishing and vishing attacks that leverage state-of-the-art technology such as deepfake and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI).
This is according to the FBI, which warned US citizens about an ongoing phishing campaign, in a new public service announcement published May 15.
The announcement states that threat actors are creating credible audio and text messages, in many cases impersonating current and former senior US federal and state government officials, or their contacts, the FBI said. “If you receive a message claiming to be from a senior US official, do not assume it is authentic,” the warning reads.
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Smishing is short for SMS phishing, while vishing is short for voice phishing. Both are a variant of the traditional phishing attack in which threat actors throw a bait and “phish” for sensitive data. Victims are often tricked into sharing passwords, credit card information, or other valuable information, when tricksters promise them huge discounts on popular goods, or threaten them with closing down their social accounts.
In almost all cases, phishing messages leverage people’s emotions and force the victims to act quickly and without second thought.
The FBI did not discuss the contents of the messages being sent out, but it did say that the attackers are trying to move people to a secondary messaging platform, where distributing malware would be easier. It also gave a few recommendations on how to be safe, including verifying people’s identities and listening to the voice messages carefully for inconsistencies in tone and word choice.
Phishing has been around since the dawn of the internet, basically, but with the proliferation of generative artificial intelligence and deepfakes, the problem has gotten even worse. One of the most abused individuals is Elon Musk, whose face is constantly being plastered on ads for fake crypto exchanges and giveaways.
Via The Register
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