Brokers with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) briefed Capitol Hill employees just lately on hardening the safety of their cell units, after a contacts record stolen from the non-public telephone of the White Home Chief of Workers Susie Wiles was reportedly used to gas a collection of textual content messages and telephone 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 acceptable safety protections which might be already constructed into most client cell units.
A screenshot of the primary web page from Sen. Wyden’s letter to FBI Director Kash Patel.
On Might 29, The Wall Road Journal reported that federal authorities have been investigating a clandestine effort to impersonate Ms. Wiles by way of textual content messages and in telephone calls that will have used AI to spoof her voice. Based on The Journal, Wiles advised associates her cellphone contacts have been hacked, giving the impersonator entry to the non-public telephone numbers of a few of the nation’s most influential folks.
The execution of this phishing and impersonation marketing campaign — no matter its targets might have been — instructed the attackers have been financially motivated, and never significantly refined.
“It turned clear to a few 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 few of the folks stated,” the Journal wrote. “In lots of circumstances, the impersonator’s grammar was damaged and the messages have been extra formal than the best way Wiles usually communicates, individuals who have obtained the messages stated. The calls and textual content messages additionally didn’t come from Wiles’s telephone 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 taking pictures 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 based on 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, conserving telephone software program updated, and rebooting recurrently.
“That is inadequate to guard Senate staff and different high-value targets in opposition to international spies utilizing superior cyber instruments,” Wyden wrote in a letter despatched right now to FBI Director Kash Patel. “Effectively-funded international intelligence businesses don’t have to depend on phishing messages and malicious attachments to contaminate unsuspecting victims with spyware and adware. Cyber mercenary corporations promote their authorities prospects superior ‘zero-click’ capabilities to ship spyware and adware that don’t require any motion by the sufferer.”
Wyden pressured that to assist counter refined assaults, the FBI ought to be encouraging lawmakers and their employees to allow anti-spyware defenses which might be constructed into Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android telephone software program.
These embrace Apple’s Lockdown Modewhich is designed for customers who’re nervous they might be topic to focused assaults. Lockdown Mode restricts non-essential iOS options to cut back the gadget’s general assault floor. Google Android units carry the same function referred to as Superior Safety Mode.
Wyden additionally urged the FBI to replace its coaching to suggest quite a few different steps that individuals can take to make their cell units much less trackable, together with using advert blockers to protect in opposition to malicious ads, disabling advert monitoring IDs in cell units, and opting out of business information brokers (the suspect charged within the Minnesota shootings reportedly used a number of people-search companies to seek out the house addresses of his targets).
The senator’s letter notes that whereas the FBI has really helpful the entire above precautions in varied advisories issued through the years, the recommendation the company is giving now to the nation’s leaders must be extra complete, actionable and pressing.
“Despite the seriousness of the menace, the FBI has but to supply efficient defensive steering,” 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 threat and must be exceptionally protected,” Weaver stated. “Their computer systems ought to be locked down and effectively administered, and so forth. And the identical applies to staffers.”
Weaver famous that Apple’s Lockdown Mode has a monitor file of blocking zero-day assaults on iOS functions; in September 2023, Citizen Lab documented how Lockdown Mode foiled a zero-click flaw able to putting in spyware and adware on iOS units with none interplay from the sufferer.
Earlier this month, Citizen Lab researchers documented a zero-click assault used to contaminate the iOS units 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 by way of 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 units 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-2025-24200which Apple stated was utilized in an especially 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 may apparently be exploited provided that the attacker had bodily entry to the focused susceptible gadget. And because the outdated infosec trade adage goes, if an adversary has bodily entry to your gadget, it’s most definitely not your gadget anymore.
I can’t converse to Google’s Superior Safety Mode personally, as a result of I don’t use Google or Android units. However I’ve had Apple’s Lockdown Mode enabled on all of my Apple units because it was first made accessible in September 2022. I can solely consider a single event when considered one of my apps did not work correctly with Lockdown Mode turned on, and in that case I used to be ready so as to add a brief exception for that app in Lockdown Mode’s settings.
My essential 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, although nothing then prevents you from contacting that particular person straight. This has occurred to me not less than twice, and in each circumstances the particular person in query was already an authorised contact, and stated that they had not tried to achieve out.
Though it will 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.
