Criminals Using FBI Emergency Data Requests
I’ve been writing about the problem of law enforcement’s access to encryption for decades now: that if you create a way for law enforcement to bypass encryption, the bad guys will use it too.
It turns out that the same thing is true for non-technical backdoors:
The advisory said cybercriminals successfully impersonated law enforcement by using compromised police accounts to send emails to companies asking for user information. In some cases, the requests cite false threats, such as claims of human trafficking and, in some cases, that the person will “suffer greatly or die” unless the company in question returns the requested information.
The FBI said sensitive access to law enforcement accounts allowed hackers to generate official-looking subpoenas that led companies to turn over usernames, emails, phone numbers, and other private information about their users.
Posted November 12, 2024 at 7:05 AM • 0 Comments
Bruce Schneier sidebar photo by Joe MacInnis.
Source link