FBI warns of sophisticated phishing attacks targeting high-profile individuals

As noted by CyberScoop, the FBI has issued a warning regarding a sophisticated phishing campaign that is targeting prominent individuals, their families, and acquaintances through a commercial messaging application. The attackers aim to gain long-term access to sensitive data by impersonating various figures and using deceptive tactics.

The attackers, whose objectives and origins remain undisclosed, have recently impersonated government officials, journalists, and public figures. They trick victims into granting access to legitimate cloud services like Microsoft or Google by posing as someone requesting a review of a draft article or document. This method, which the FBI has been tracking since late 2025, utilizes OAuth consent phishing, allowing attackers to bypass passwords and multi-factor authentication by obtaining high-level permissions. Once granted, this access can only be revoked by the victim manually invalidating the token in their application security settings, not by simply changing their password.

The FBI advises users to scrutinize communications from unknown sources, verify sender identities independently, and only grant access to trusted applications to mitigate this threat.

Source: CyberScoop