Security News > 2021 > November > FBI system hacked to email 'urgent' warning about fake cyberattacks
The Federal Bureau of Investigation email servers were hacked to distribute spam email impersonating FBI warnings that the recipients' network was breached and data was stolen.
The emails pretended to warn about a "Sophisticated chain attack" from an advanced threat actor known, who they identify as Vinny Troia.
The FBI confirmed that the content of the emails is fake and that they were working on solving the issue as their helpdesk is flooded with calls from worried administrators.
Whoever is behind this campaign was likely motivated to discredit Vinny Troia, the founder of dark web intelligence company Shadowbyte, who is named in the message as the threat actor responsible of the fake supply-chain attack.
"The last time they hacked the national center for missing children's we site blog and put up a post about me being a pedophile" - Vinny Troia.
This assumption is further supported by the fact that 'pompompurin' contacted Troia a few hours before the spam email campaigns started to simply say "Enjoy," as a warning that something involving the researcher was about to happen.