Federal authorities have issued an urgent warning about sophisticated deepfake scams targeting high-profile individuals across the government and cryptocurrency sectors. The FBI reported yesterday that hackers are employing artificial intelligence to impersonate senior U.S. officials in an elaborate phishing campaign that began in April. Government Officials and Crypto Founders Under

• FBI warns hackers using deepfake voice and text to impersonate senior US officials since April.
• Government account breaches could lead to cascading attacks through trusted contact networks.
• Crypto leader Sandeep Narwal reports scammers using deepfakes in Zoom calls to distribute malware.

Federal authorities have issued an urgent warning about sophisticated deepfake scams targeting high-profile individuals across the government and cryptocurrency sectors. The FBI reported yesterday that hackers are employing artificial intelligence to impersonate senior U.S. officials in an elaborate phishing campaign that began in April.

Government Officials and Crypto Founders Under Attack

The FBI’s May 15 advisory states that scammers are using deepfake voice and text messages to develop trust with victims who are often current or former federal and state officials. The attackers want to gain access to government accounts, and this could result in many security issues as they use trusted channels.

“If you get a message that says it’s from a high-ranking US official, don’t believe it right away,” said the FBI in its statement.

It was revealed that hackers are leading victims to unsafe links and fake websites made to steal people’s passwords. As soon as they get this data, scammers can reach out to even more people, increasing the risk of further attacks.

In the same way, those leading in the cryptocurrency industry are experiencing similar complex attacks. On May 13, Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon, revealed that scammers gained access to his colleague’s Telegram account and made fake Zoom calls using deepfakes of him and others. When audio was turned off, the victims were told to install harmful software, which affected their systems.

Nailwal pointed out that the attack vector is very scary, and several people had contacted him to check if the calls were suspicious.

It is recommended by security professionals to take several steps to protect yourself from these scams. The FBI advises checking who the sender is, checking for any inconsistencies in messages, and using multi-factor authentication. Nailwal recommends not installing software when something unexpected happens and always using a different device for cryptocurrency wallets.

As AI becomes more advanced, these deepfake schemes are becoming a bigger risk that everyone in both the public and private sectors needs to watch out for. 

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