If the FBI emails you, it might be difficult not to take it seriously. But, in this case, we implore you to exercise caution, as tens of thousands of fake emails from the FBI were sent out this weekend.
The emails come from a hack of the Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal (LEEP), an FBI-run online portal, which allowed the hackers to send out an email blast from an email address ending in @ic.fbi.gov. That address makes it much more difficult to properly vet such an email; good cybersecurity practice involves identifying the true email address of the sender. You could do everything right, and still fall for this hack.
As soon as the FBI identified the issue, it took the server offline, so no more false emails should be sent out. Unfortunately, as many as 100,000 such emails were sent out Friday and Saturday before they could be stopped.
The emails themselves “warn” users that they are at risk of a “sophisticated chain attack.” These emails were sent to a list put together from the American Registry of Internet Numbers (ARIN), as well as other emails harvested elsewhere.
Stay alert!
