Brokers with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) briefed Capitol Hill employees just lately on hardening the safety of their cell gadgets, after a contacts checklist stolen from the non-public cellphone of the White Home Chief of Workers Susie Wiles was reportedly used to gasoline a sequence of textual content messages and cellphone calls impersonating her to U.S. lawmakers. However in a letter this week to the FBI, one of many Senate’s most tech-savvy lawmakers says the feds aren’t doing sufficient to suggest extra applicable safety protections which can be already constructed into most shopper cell gadgets.
A screenshot of the primary web page from Sen. Wyden’s letter to FBI Director Kash Patel.
On Could 29, The Wall Road Journal reported that federal authorities have been investigating a clandestine effort to impersonate Ms. Wiles through textual content messages and in cellphone calls that will have used AI to spoof her voice. In keeping with The Journal, Wiles instructed associates her cellphone contacts have been hacked, giving the impersonator entry to the personal cellphone numbers of a number of the nation’s most influential individuals.
The execution of this phishing and impersonation marketing campaign — no matter its targets could have been — advised the attackers have been financially motivated, and never significantly refined.
“It grew to become clear to a number of the lawmakers that the requests have been suspicious when the impersonator started asking questions on Trump that Wiles ought to have recognized the solutions to—and in a single case, when the impersonator requested for a money switch, a number of the individuals stated,” the Journal wrote. “In lots of instances, the impersonator’s grammar was damaged and the messages have been extra formal than the way in which Wiles sometimes communicates, individuals who have acquired the messages stated. The calls and textual content messages additionally didn’t come from Wiles’s cellphone quantity.”
Subtle or not, the impersonation marketing campaign was quickly punctuated by the homicide of Minnesota Home of Representatives Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the capturing of Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman and his spouse. So when FBI brokers provided in mid-June to temporary U.S. Senate employees on cell threats, greater than 140 staffers took them up on that invitation (a remarkably excessive quantity contemplating that no meals was provided on the occasion).
However in keeping with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the recommendation the FBI offered to Senate staffers was largely restricted to remedial ideas, reminiscent of not clicking on suspicious hyperlinks or attachments, not utilizing public wifi networks, turning off bluetooth, protecting cellphone software program updated, and rebooting often.
“That is inadequate to guard Senate staff and different high-value targets in opposition to overseas spies utilizing superior cyber instruments,” Wyden wrote in a letter despatched as we speak to FBI Director Kash Patel. “Nicely-funded overseas intelligence businesses would not have to depend on phishing messages and malicious attachments to contaminate unsuspecting victims with spyware and adware. Cyber mercenary corporations promote their authorities clients superior ‘zero-click’ capabilities to ship spyware and adware that don’t require any motion by the sufferer.”
Wyden confused that to assist counter refined assaults, the FBI ought to be encouraging lawmakers and their employees to allow anti-spyware defenses which can be constructed into Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android cellphone software program.
These embrace Apple’s Lockdown Mode, which is designed for customers who’re fearful they could be topic to focused assaults. Lockdown Mode restricts non-essential iOS options to cut back the gadget’s total assault floor. Google Android gadgets carry the same function known as Superior Safety Mode.
Wyden additionally urged the FBI to replace its coaching to suggest a lot of different steps that folks can take to make their cell gadgets much less trackable, together with the usage of advert blockers to protect in opposition to malicious commercials, disabling advert monitoring IDs in cell gadgets, and opting out of business information brokers (the suspect charged within the Minnesota shootings reportedly used a number of people-search companies to search out the house addresses of his targets).
The senator’s letter notes that whereas the FBI has really useful the entire above precautions in varied advisories issued over time, the recommendation the company is giving now to the nation’s leaders must be extra complete, actionable and pressing.
“Regardless of the seriousness of the menace, the FBI has but to supply efficient defensive steerage,” Wyden stated.
Nicholas Weaver is a researcher with the Worldwide Pc Science Institute, a nonprofit in Berkeley, Calif. Weaver stated Lockdown Mode or Superior Safety will mitigate many vulnerabilities, and ought to be the default setting for all members of Congress and their employees.
“Lawmakers are at distinctive danger and should be exceptionally protected,” Weaver stated. “Their computer systems ought to be locked down and properly administered, and many others. And the identical applies to staffers.”
Weaver famous that Apple’s Lockdown Mode has a monitor report of blocking zero-day assaults on iOS purposes; in September 2023, Citizen Lab documented how Lockdown Mode foiled a zero-click flaw able to putting in spyware and adware on iOS gadgets with none interplay from the sufferer.
Earlier this month, Citizen Lab researchers documented a zero-click assault used to contaminate the iOS gadgets of two journalists with Paragon’s Graphite spyware and adware. The vulnerability might be exploited merely by sending the goal a booby-trapped media file delivered through iMessage. Apple additionally just lately up to date its advisory for the zero-click flaw (CVE-2025-43200), noting that it was mitigated as of iOS 18.3.1, which was launched in February 2025.
Apple has not commented on whether or not CVE-2025-43200 might be exploited on gadgets with Lockdown Mode turned on. However HelpNetSecurity noticed that on the identical time Apple addressed CVE-2025-43200 again in February, the corporate mounted one other vulnerability flagged by Citizen Lab researcher Invoice Marczak: CVE-2025-24200, which Apple stated was utilized in a particularly refined bodily assault in opposition to particular focused people that allowed attackers to disable USB Restricted Mode on a locked gadget.
In different phrases, the flaw might apparently be exploited provided that the attacker had bodily entry to the focused susceptible gadget. And because the outdated infosec business adage goes, if an adversary has bodily entry to your gadget, it’s most certainly not your gadget anymore.
I can’t communicate to Google’s Superior Safety Mode personally, as a result of I don’t use Google or Android gadgets. However I’ve had Apple’s Lockdown Mode enabled on all of my Apple gadgets because it was first made accessible in September 2022. I can solely consider a single event when one in all my apps didn’t work correctly with Lockdown Mode turned on, and in that case I used to be ready so as to add a short lived exception for that app in Lockdown Mode’s settings.
My important gripe with Lockdown Mode was captured in a March 2025 column by TechCrunch’s Lorenzo Francheschi-Bicchierai, who wrote about its penchant for periodically sending mystifying notifications that somebody has been blocked from contacting you, though nothing then prevents you from contacting that individual immediately. This has occurred to me not less than twice, and in each instances the individual in query was already an permitted contact, and stated they’d not tried to achieve out.
Though it might be good if Apple’s Lockdown Mode despatched fewer, much less alarming and extra informative alerts, the occasional baffling warning message is hardly sufficient to make me flip it off.
