by “If you receive a message that claims to be from a high -ranking US official, do not assume that it is authentic,” warned the FBI in May. The announcement of the public service was written as a advice for everyone, but found that many of the goals of “malicious actors”, the US officials, are other “current or former high -ranking US federal or state government officials and their contacts”.
While every corporate worker Today is probably family with hr-mandated training to come to combat “phishing” —Scams that involve deception over email-and while “smishing, which occurs over Sms messages, has bigome more prevalent, the fbi Warned that“ malicious actors Are more frequently exploiting ai-generated audio to impersonate Well-Known, public figures or personal relations to incense the Believability of their schemes ”in what is known as” Vishing. “
Read more: From fraud to music, cloning from AI language reasons is on the advance
And officials at the highest level of government were reported and targeted.
On Tuesday the Washington Post reported that Marco Rubio, State Secretary of President Donald Trump and deputy national security advisor, was the youngest, who assumes that an unknown person was used to use his voice and writing style in language and text messages on the non-regulation encryption app signal for “Three Foreign Minister, a US governor and a US member of the congress, to imitate after that on July 3.
Read more: What is signal, the messaging app used by Trump officials and is it safe?
According to the cable sent to the State Ministry, the fraudster tried a criminal offense with the “goal of gaining information or accounts. post About the specific goals of the imitation campaign and the content of the messages sent.
Rubio is not the first in the Trump administration to pretend.
At the end of May the Wall Street Journal reported that the federal authorities examined the identity of the white head of the White House, Susie Wiles, by an unknown person to try to achieve prominent republican senators and congress members as well as managing directors.
Wiles claimed that the contacts of her personal cell phone had been hacked, and while calls and news did not come from their number, the recipients claimed that the voice in the line like their sound and the officials to assume that AI technology was used.
When the White House and the FBI said at the time they took the incident seriously, Trump seemed unhindered and commented: “Nobody can spend Susie. There is only one susie.”
The incidents in Trump’s orbit are particularly worrying, since the president himself reports a personal cell phone and answered calls of numbers that he does not know.
“It was just a matter of time,” said David Axelrod, a former senior strategist of President Barack Obama, on X about the Rubio report. “This is the new world in which we live and we should find out better how we can defend ourselves against it because they have an impact on our democracy and the world.”
Nicholas Thompson, CEO from The AtlanticHis editor -in -chief at the beginning of this year to a Signal Group chat with top officials such as Rubio, Defense Minister Pete Hegseth and the former national security advisor Mike Waltz, who was released after the controversy, was added unintentionally.
The Foreign Ministry shared it with post That it would “carry out a thorough examination and continue to carry out protective measures in order to prevent this from taking place in the future”.
How to avoid being a victim of “Vishing”
Generative AI has made it much easier to imitate other people’s voices, which in turn makes the Vishing fraud easier.
The FBI in May PSA asked people to try to check the identity of a caller or a voiceemail. “If you are contacted by someone you know well via a new platform or telephone number, check the new contact information via a previously confirmed platform or a trustworthy source,” recommended this.
You should also take a closer look at the sound and the choice of words of contact to try to distinguish a legitimate phone call or a voice message from malicious imitation, although he warned that “the content of ai-generated content is so far advanced that it is often difficult to identify”.
“If in doubt about the authenticity of someone who wants to communicate with you, turn to your responsible security officers or the FBI for help,” said the PSA and added: “The FBI demands that the victims have to report an incident of their local FBI field office or the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) at www.ic3.gov. contain detailed information as possible. “
Rev, a company with AI transcription software, outlines three different differences in a blog between an ai-generated voice and a human voice: a flat tone (generative-Ai has difficulties to replicate), bruish unnatural language, including the stumbling block on phrases or rude words, and strange background noise like repeated cracks. Although Rev. also warns: “If the generative AI improves further, the synthetic audio sounds more and more like us.”
The computer security company McAfee referred to several other potential signs of a visher attack, including an undesirable or non-introduced telephone call, an aggressive assertion of authority and an urgent request for confidential information such as social security numbers.
“The caller will ask for information somewhere in the script for a Vishing attack. It can start with something harmless, as to ask to confirm your address. If you can make you talk, you will soon ask for valuable information such as a social security number,” warns McAfee. “It is a red flag if someone needs you to give him information immediately. Vishing attacker use the fear of harmful consequences to put the victims under pressure to replace data. You will tell you that you have to act now or that the call is your last opportunity to fix a problem.”
The Ministry of Veteran Affairs also issued general guidelines to prevent fraud, including registration for the Federal Trade Commission, do not call for registration to reduce robocalls, not provide personal data or payment information by phone and simply hang up if you feel that things are not correct.
