MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – A senior official with the U.S. State Department tells Local 10 News they are investigating a recent case of someone pretending to be Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the messaging platform Signal.
That person contacted three foreign ministers, a U.S. governor and a member of congress, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable reviewed by the Washington Post.
“We deal with a lot of cybersecurity incidents on a daily basis, both preventing them and then running into prospective clients that actually have had attacks,” said cybersecurity expert Parker Lake, a Client Development Executive for Ten 4 Technology Group.
He also spoke about scams driving by people using AI.
“(I’m seeing it) more and more,” he said. “Specifically with companies that require verification before they send large sums of money. At this point, they know that they need to make a phone call to verify it, so someone has that phone call come in and it has been an AI generated voice at some point.”
“The most profitable scam would be approaching a real estate law firm that is holding money is escrow, create an email similar to a real email, and impersonate a voice to verify,” Lake added. “AI has the ability to clone your voice. Cloning a voice is very, very simple.”
In the case of someone like Marco Rubio, there are plenty of opportunities to hear his voice.
“Enormous amounts of opportunities, and the stakes are high because of the position he has,” said Lake.
World Affairs Council Miami Board Member Moises Isaac Benhabib is a former U.S. State Department Foreign Affairs Officer with direct service to the last four secretaries of state.
He spoke about what happens when this level of scam plays out at that level of government.
“It is very debilitating to the US Government, especially in this administration where there is this personal level of diplomacy between ministers and the secretary,” said Benhabib. “They are going to have to communicate through official channels to say hey, I am going to talk to you on my personal device or this is my personal email to avoid these kind of situations.”
He also spoke about the scammer’s potential motivation.
“Well, it was either to get additional information out of the minister or create some sort of pause between administration,” he said. “Maybe they wanted to throw a wrench into some process the administration wanted to do. Right now, Marco Rubio is on a trade mission so maybe they wanted to get in the way of that, make things uncomfortable.”
“There are tons of official channels, Secretary Rubio has, because he’s both dual-headed as the Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor. He has access to two world-renowned operation centers, one at the White House and then this other one at the State Department,” Benhabib added. “So at least in that initial communication, they should be routed through there, if only to confirm that the person they’re speaking to is in fact that person.”
The incident comes on the heels of an FBI warning about a recent campaign of malicious actors impersonating senior U.S. officials.
“It’s something that comes right out of Hollywood, but now this is something that could happen at any time to anybody,” said Lake. “This could happen to anybody who is let’s say working at a law firm that’s transferring large amounts of money. It can happen to a grandparent who may be tempted or prompted to transfer part of their life savings to their grandchildren who are in trouble, but it’s not actually the grandchildren, it’s just somebody who’s cloned their voice.”
Lake’s advice is to verify. Create a code word and have a natural degree of skepticism.
“I think we all have developed this natural degree of skepticism of the written word, because we’ve seen email scams for so long, but now we have to be able to be skeptical about things that we hear and see as well because seeing is no longer believing,” he said.