Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate Ben Cardin A recent Zoom call was targeted by a caller who identified himself as a former senior Ukrainian official, according to a notice released Wednesday to Senate offices and obtained by NBC News.
The caller, whose identity has not been released, identified himself as the former foreign minister of Ukraine Dmitry KulebaAccording to a notice sent to senate offices to warn them to be on the lookout for similar attempts.
Punchbowl reported first Details of deepfake.
“This effort stands out for its technical sophistication and plausibility” amid the recent surge in social engineering threats, the Senate security office said in a statement Monday.
The notice detailed an email Cardi’s office received on Sept. 19 from someone claiming to be Kuleba, which the notice described as “politically motivated questions about the upcoming election.”
Cardin and his staff had previously met with Kuleba, and “when connected to Zoom, there appeared to be a live audio-video link that matched past encounters in appearance and sound.”
Cardin and members of his team, who identified himself as Kuleba, were accused of “behaving out of character” and saying, “Do you support long-range missiles into Russian territory? When they started looking for answers to questions like “I need to know your answer”, they began to suspect that the call was fake.
The caller’s questioning was “likely an attempt to browbeat the senator into commenting on a political candidate,” the notice said.
Cardin and his staff ended the call, the release said, and Cardin’s office contacted the State Department and confirmed the caller was not Kuleba.
The State Department and Capitol police did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday night. The FBI declined to comment.
Cardin called the caller a “malicious actor” in a statement his office released Wednesday night about the incident.
Cardin said the caller “engaged in a deceptive attempt to chat with me by pretending to be a known person.” He said he ended the call quickly and notified the investigating authorities.
“Once it became immediately clear that the person I was contacting was not who they claimed to be, I terminated the call and my office took swift action by alerting the appropriate authorities,” Cardin said.
Cardi’s office declined to comment further on the details of the call.
The incident also prompted a separate notice to Senate offices warning of an “active social engineering campaign” “targeting senators and Senate staff.”
The notice, sent by the Cybersecurity Information Center and also obtained by NBC News, directs offices on how to respond when they receive a suspicious message or a request for a video call with a foreign government official.
“Targets threaten subjects posing as representatives of a foreign dignitary and requesting an official video call, which is actually malicious,” the second notice said. “This technique is used to discredit the victim or to obtain additional information. Threat actors use existing connections and other known information to appear legitimate.”
FBI and other government agencies confirmed last month that Iran was behind the effort this year According to intelligence officials, the materials stolen from former President Donald Trump’s campaign were sent to President Joe Biden’s campaign, which he did not request. This was reported by NBC News This month, the Justice Department plans to file criminal charges related to the hacking of Trump’s campaign, according to two law enforcement officials.
Ken Dilanian contributed.