Cybercriminals hacked into an FBI email system on Saturday, November 13 and used it to send out tens of thousands of bogus emails warning of potential cyberattacks. The fake emails appeared to be coming from a legitimate FBI email address ending in @ic.fbi.gov. According to a copy of one of the emails posted on Twitter, the emails’ subject line stated “Urgent: Threat actor in systems” and appeared to be signed off by the Department of Homeland Security.
The FBI stated that both they and the Infrastructure Security Agency were aware of the incident. The hardware impacted by the incident was quickly taken offline when the breach was discovered. They classified the incident as “an ongoing situation.”
In a more recent statement, the FBI said no data or personal information was accessed. The compromised email system was one of several of the agency’s email systems that was ordinarily used for outgoing messages and was not related to any systems containing any sensitive information or data. The agency stated that no classified information was breached.