Suspected state-backed phishing campaign targets officials, journalists

High-profile government officials, military members, diplomats, and investigative journalists were targeted by a potential state-backed phishing campaign.

High-profile government officials, military members, and diplomats, as well as investigative journalists, in Germany and other European countries have been targeted by a potential state-backed phishing campaign exploiting the Signal messaging app, The Hacker News reports.

The campaign was identified by Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, or BFV, and Federal Office for Information Security, or BSI.

Hackers purporting to be "Signal Support" or "Signal Security ChatBot" have lured targets into providing their PIN or verification codes to prevent data loss, with the obtained data then leveraged for account access as victims are instructed to register a new account, said the agencies in a joint advisory.

Other intrusions that exploited Signal's device linking functionality enabled account infiltration via QR code scanning lures.

"Successful access to messenger accounts not only allows confidential individual communications to be viewed, but also potentially compromises entire networks via group chats," the agencies added. Such an attack campaign, which resembles previous intrusions by various Russia-nexus threat operations, comes after CERT Polska attributed the coordinated cyberattacks against Polish energy infrastructure to Russian state-backed threat operation Static Tundra.

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Sharon Florentine Editorial Director

Sharon Florentine is the editorial director for CyberRisk Alliance’s Channel Brands and acting editorial director for SC UK. She is responsible for setting strategy and editorial direction and developing content for news, features, analysis and other written content, moderates live webcasts, and oversees research projects. Sharon has previously held key editorial, content and leadership positions at DevOps.com, Security Boulevard, CIO.com, Ziff Davis Enterprise, and CRN, among others.