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The FBI warns that hackers are obtaining private user information – including emails and phone numbers – from US-based technology companies by compromising government and police email addresses to make “emergency” data requests.
the FBI Public Notice Made this week is a rare acknowledgment from the federal government about the threat created by fraudulent emergency data requests, a legal process designed to help police and federal authorities obtain information from companies to respond to immediate threats that affect someone’s life or property. The abuse of emergency data requests is not new, and has always been It has been widely reported in Recent years. Now, the FBI is warning that it saw an “uptick” around August in criminal posts advertising online access to fraudulent emergency data requests or making fraudulent emergency data requests, and that they were released to the public for awareness.
“Cybercriminals are likely to access and use compromised U.S. and foreign government email addresses to place fraudulent emergency data requests to U.S.-based businesses, exposing customers’ personal information to further use for criminal purposes,” the FBI warning said.
Police and law enforcement in the United States generally need some kind of legal justification to search for and obtain private data that companies store on their servers. For a person’s private content, such as their files, emails or messages, police must provide sufficient evidence of a potential crime before a US court can issue a search warrant allowing police to request that information from a private company. Police can issue subpoenas — which do not require going to court — asking companies to access limited amounts of information about a user, such as their basic account information, such as their username, account logins, email addresses, phone numbers, and sometimes their approximate location. .
There are also emergency requests, a procedure through which law enforcement officials can urgently request a person’s information from a company in the event of an immediate danger, as there is no time to seek a court order.
It’s these emergency requests that federal authorities say some cybercriminals are abusing.
The FBI said in its advisory that it had seen several public posts published by known cybercriminals during 2023 and 2024, claiming access to email addresses used by US law enforcement and some foreign governments. The FBI says this access was eventually used to send fraudulent subpoenas and other legal demands to US companies seeking private user data stored on their systems.
The warning stated that cybercriminals succeeded in posing as law enforcement officials by using hacked police accounts to send emails to companies requesting user data. In some cases, the requests cited false threats, such as allegations of human trafficking and, in one case, that the individual would “suffer severely or die” unless the company in question returned the requested information.
The FBI said the compromised access to law enforcement accounts allowed hackers to create legitimate-looking subpoenas that led companies to hand over usernames, emails, phone numbers and other private information about their users. The FBI said all fraudulent attempts to submit emergency data requests were not successful.
Cybercriminals often use the requested data to harass, defame, and target individuals through financial fraud schemes. According to a Bloomberg report from 2022which at the time found that hackers had obtained user information from customers of Apple, Facebook, and Instagram owner Meta, by making fraudulent emergency data requests. Snap, the maker of Snapchat, and Discord were reportedly targeted.
apple, Google, deadand popwhich stores vast amounts of customers’ personal and private data, collectively receives tens of thousands of emergency data requests each year.
Bloomberg reported in 2022 that some of the fraudulent emergency data requests dated back to early 2021, and were carried out by groups of mostly teens and young adults, such as the Recursion Team, and later Lapsus$, which went on to compromise some of the world’s largest companies, including Uber.
Law enforcement organizations should take steps to improve their cybersecurity posture to prevent intrusions, including stronger passwords and multi-factor authentication, the FBI said in its warning. The FBI said private companies “must apply critical thinking to any emergency data requests received,” since cybercriminals “understand the urgency.”
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