Brokers with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) briefed Capitol Hill workers lately on hardening the safety of their cell gadgets, after a contacts listing stolen from the private telephone of the White Home Chief of Employees Susie Wiles was reportedly used to gasoline a sequence 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 advocate extra acceptable safety protections which might 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 Might 29, The Wall Avenue Journal reported that federal authorities have been investigating a clandestine effort to impersonate Ms. Wiles through textual content messages and in telephone calls which will have used AI to spoof her voice. In accordance with The Journal, Wiles advised associates her cellphone contacts have been hacked, giving the impersonator entry to the personal telephone numbers of a few of the nation’s most influential individuals.
The execution of this phishing and impersonation marketing campaign — no matter its objectives 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 individuals mentioned,” the Journal wrote. “In lots of instances, 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 mentioned. 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 capturing of Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman and his spouse. So when FBI brokers provided in mid-June to transient U.S. Senate workers 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 supplied to Senate staffers was largely restricted to remedial ideas, similar to not clicking on suspicious hyperlinks or attachments, not utilizing public wifi networks, turning off bluetooth, holding telephone software program updated, and rebooting repeatedly.
“That is inadequate to guard Senate workers and different high-value targets in opposition to international spies utilizing superior cyber instruments,” Wyden wrote in a letter despatched in the present day to FBI Director Kash Patel. “Nicely-funded international intelligence companies wouldn’t have to depend on phishing messages and malicious attachments to contaminate unsuspecting victims with spyware and adware. Cyber mercenary firms promote their authorities prospects superior ‘zero-click’ capabilities to ship spyware and adware that don’t require any motion by the sufferer.”
Wyden careworn that to assist counter refined assaults, the FBI must be encouraging lawmakers and their workers to allow anti-spyware defenses which might be constructed into Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android telephone software program.
These embody Apple’s Lockdown Mode, which is designed for customers who’re apprehensive they could be topic to focused assaults. Lockdown Mode restricts non-essential iOS options to scale back the machine’s general assault floor. Google Android gadgets carry an analogous characteristic referred to as Superior Safety Mode.
Wyden additionally urged the FBI to replace its coaching to advocate quite a lot of different steps that folks can take to make their cell gadgets much less trackable, together with using advert blockers to protect in opposition to malicious commercials, disabling advert monitoring IDs in cell gadgets, and opting out of business knowledge 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 beneficial all the 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 offer efficient defensive steerage,” Wyden mentioned.
Nicholas Weaver is a researcher with the Worldwide Pc Science Institute, a nonprofit in Berkeley, Calif. Weaver mentioned Lockdown Mode or Superior Safety will mitigate many vulnerabilities, and must be the default setting for all members of Congress and their workers.
“Lawmakers are at distinctive threat and must be exceptionally protected,” Weaver mentioned. “Their computer systems must be locked down and properly administered, and so forth. And the identical applies to staffers.”
Weaver famous that Apple’s Lockdown Mode has a observe file 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 may very well be exploited merely by sending the goal a booby-trapped media file delivered through iMessage. Apple additionally 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 may very well 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 mentioned 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 machine.
In different phrases, the flaw might apparently be exploited provided that the attacker had bodily entry to the focused weak machine. And because the outdated infosec trade adage goes, if an adversary has bodily entry to your machine, it’s almost certainly not your machine anymore.
I can’t converse 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 obtainable 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 in a position so as to add a short lived 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, regardless that nothing then prevents you from contacting that particular person instantly. This has occurred to me a minimum of twice, and in each instances the particular person in query was already an authorized contact, and mentioned that they had 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.
Brokers with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) briefed Capitol Hill workers lately on hardening the safety of their cell gadgets, after a contacts listing stolen from the private telephone of the White Home Chief of Employees Susie Wiles was reportedly used to gasoline a sequence 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 advocate extra acceptable safety protections which might 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 Might 29, The Wall Avenue Journal reported that federal authorities have been investigating a clandestine effort to impersonate Ms. Wiles through textual content messages and in telephone calls which will have used AI to spoof her voice. In accordance with The Journal, Wiles advised associates her cellphone contacts have been hacked, giving the impersonator entry to the personal telephone numbers of a few of the nation’s most influential individuals.
The execution of this phishing and impersonation marketing campaign — no matter its objectives 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 individuals mentioned,” the Journal wrote. “In lots of instances, 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 mentioned. 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 capturing of Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman and his spouse. So when FBI brokers provided in mid-June to transient U.S. Senate workers 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 supplied to Senate staffers was largely restricted to remedial ideas, similar to not clicking on suspicious hyperlinks or attachments, not utilizing public wifi networks, turning off bluetooth, holding telephone software program updated, and rebooting repeatedly.
“That is inadequate to guard Senate workers and different high-value targets in opposition to international spies utilizing superior cyber instruments,” Wyden wrote in a letter despatched in the present day to FBI Director Kash Patel. “Nicely-funded international intelligence companies wouldn’t have to depend on phishing messages and malicious attachments to contaminate unsuspecting victims with spyware and adware. Cyber mercenary firms promote their authorities prospects superior ‘zero-click’ capabilities to ship spyware and adware that don’t require any motion by the sufferer.”
Wyden careworn that to assist counter refined assaults, the FBI must be encouraging lawmakers and their workers to allow anti-spyware defenses which might be constructed into Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android telephone software program.
These embody Apple’s Lockdown Mode, which is designed for customers who’re apprehensive they could be topic to focused assaults. Lockdown Mode restricts non-essential iOS options to scale back the machine’s general assault floor. Google Android gadgets carry an analogous characteristic referred to as Superior Safety Mode.
Wyden additionally urged the FBI to replace its coaching to advocate quite a lot of different steps that folks can take to make their cell gadgets much less trackable, together with using advert blockers to protect in opposition to malicious commercials, disabling advert monitoring IDs in cell gadgets, and opting out of business knowledge 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 beneficial all the 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 offer efficient defensive steerage,” Wyden mentioned.
Nicholas Weaver is a researcher with the Worldwide Pc Science Institute, a nonprofit in Berkeley, Calif. Weaver mentioned Lockdown Mode or Superior Safety will mitigate many vulnerabilities, and must be the default setting for all members of Congress and their workers.
“Lawmakers are at distinctive threat and must be exceptionally protected,” Weaver mentioned. “Their computer systems must be locked down and properly administered, and so forth. And the identical applies to staffers.”
Weaver famous that Apple’s Lockdown Mode has a observe file 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 may very well be exploited merely by sending the goal a booby-trapped media file delivered through iMessage. Apple additionally 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 may very well 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 mentioned 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 machine.
In different phrases, the flaw might apparently be exploited provided that the attacker had bodily entry to the focused weak machine. And because the outdated infosec trade adage goes, if an adversary has bodily entry to your machine, it’s almost certainly not your machine anymore.
I can’t converse 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 obtainable 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 in a position so as to add a short lived 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, regardless that nothing then prevents you from contacting that particular person instantly. This has occurred to me a minimum of twice, and in each instances the particular person in query was already an authorized contact, and mentioned that they had 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.
