The FBI appears to have been used as a pawn in a dispute between hackers and security investigators. According to Bleeping Computer, the FBI confirmed that intruders broke into its email servers on November 13 to send fake messages claiming that the recipients had been hacked and leaked.
The emails tried to blame the non-existent attacks on Vinny Troia, the founder of security companies on the dark web NightLion and Shadowbyte.
The non-profit intelligence agency Spamhaus quickly shed light on the fake messages. The attackers used legitimate FBI systems to carry out the attack, using email addresses contained in a database from the American Registry of Internet Numbers (ARIN by the American Registry for Internet Numbers). So over 100.000 addresses received fake emails in at least two waves.
The FBI described the hack as an "ongoing situation" and initially did not provide further details. Ask email recipients to report these messages to the Cybercrime Complaint Center (Internet Crime Complaint Center) of the service or in the Department of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency). Troia told Bleeping Computer that he believes the perpetrators may be linked to "Pompomourin", a person who has been attacked in the past.
Conflicts between hackers and the security community are nothing new. In March, attackers who exploited Microsoft Exchange servers tried to involve the security reporter Brian Krebs using a fake domain.
However, it is rare for them to actually use domains, even from a government agency such as the FBI. This method, of course, seems to be much more effective, as the FBI is still flooded with calls from system administrators.
