According to the Washington Post, an impersonator used artificial intelligence to mimic both the speech and writing style of Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a scam targeting foreign ministers.
Although US authorities have yet to identify the perpetrator, they believe the impersonations are part of an effort to sway powerful figures within the government.
The scammer targeted at least five non-Department individuals.
US officials believe the scammer intended to obtain sensitive information or accounts from foreign ministers. He targeted at least five non-Department individuals: three foreign ministers, a US governor, and a US member of Congress, on the encrypted messaging app Signal.
The impersonator began posing as the Secretary of State in mid-June, creating a Signal account with the display name “[email protected]” to reach out to unsuspecting diplomats and politicians both at home and abroad.
According to a cable sent by Rubio’s office to State Department employees, the impersonator sent voicemails via Signal and, at one point, used a text message to encourage a conversation on the app. Additionally, other state officials were impersonated using email.
So far, the State Department has pledged to investigate the matter and set precautionary measures to avert such instances in the future. US authorities have not disclosed the messages’ contents or the targeted diplomats’ names.
However, they have asked diplomats to report impersonation attempts to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Non-State Department officials are also to report to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.
Senior officials have been a prime target for scammers lately
The Rubio-poser case isn’t the first impersonation attempt directed at prominent US officials this year. In May, a hacker accessed the phone of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and, posing as her, contacted several senators, governors, and corporate executives. The case even had FBI and White House officials corroborate for an investigation. President Donald Trump responded at the time, but he praised Wiles, calling her “an amazing woman” who could take care of the matter.
Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, took a more critical stance, believing most of these attacks often succeed due to officials’ lax attitudes toward data security. He added, “This is precisely why you shouldn’t use Signal or other insecure channels for official government business.”
In Rubio’s case, he also commented, “You just need 15 to 20 seconds of audio of the person, which is easy in Marco Rubio’s case. You upload it to any number of services, click a button that says ‘I have permission to use this person’s voice,’ and then you type what you want him to say.”
In one of these gaffes, in March, the former White House national security adviser, Michael Waltz, accidentally included a journalist in a Signal group chat talking about classified Yemen operations. Trump later fired him and appointed Marco Rubio as his de facto adviser. But despite the gaffe, the vast majority of officials continue to use the Signal platform for their personal and professional conversations.
Then again, in May, the FBI warned of an ongoing scam with actors posing as senior officials in malicious texts. The Bureau recognised that their messages were mostly AI-generated and aimed at securing information or money.
Additionally, in June, Ukraine’s Security Service revealed that Russian intelligence agents were impersonating the agency to enlist Ukrainian citizens for sabotage missions. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre and the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security also reported a similar case, with actors posing as high-profile officials and sending AI messages to extract sensitive information, steal money, or deploy malware.
