About Signal: Thanks to AI, strangers have pretended to be the US Foreign Minister

An unknown person has supposedly generated false audio and text messages from US Foreign Minister Marco Rubio with the help of AI technology and thus contacted other foreign ministers and high-ranking US politicians via the Krypto Messenger Signal. The Washington Post reports, citing internal documents and a initiated person. Accordingly, US criminal prosecution authorities do not know who is behind the deception. It is also unknown whether someone reacted to the contact attempts. The unknown person used a signal account that used the-not correct-email address “marco.rubio@state.gov” as a displayed name.

Not the first incident with signal

As the newspaper continues to writethe unknown person sent audion news in at least two cases and, in a further case, invited to another exchange via Signal by text message. As other people from the US government, she also pretended to be emailed. At the U.S. State Department, the incident is examined and works to prevent a repetition. The newspaper did not find out what exactly was said in the news and who they went to. The internal document for the incident comes from July 3. The FBI has not commented on who incorrectly pretends to be a government representative in the United States.

The incident now reminds of an episode from the early days of the new US government. At the end of March, the renowned magazine The Atlantic made public that its editor-in-chief had accidentally added to a group chat on signal in which high-ranking people from the US government exchanged secret information about US military strokes. As a result, it was announced that the Messenger is much more common in the US government, but again in the form of the app itself. Instead, a modified application was used, which was levered in central security functions from Signal and was extremely unsafe itself.

The unveiling of the Washington Post now underlines why commercial software such as signal for professional use by state employees is completely unsuitable. The attack by the false Marco Rubio did not need a sophisticated procedure, the Washington Post quotes an expert. Only the cell phone numbers of the contacted persons and a little training material were required for the imitating AI and finally only some carelessness of the contact. The FBI already warned in May: “If you receive a message that allegedly comes from a high-ranking representative of the US government, assume that it is not real.”