Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Ben Cardin was targeted during a recent Zoom call by a caller posing as a former Ukrainian official, according to a notice circulated to Senate offices and obtained by NBC News on Wednesday.
The caller, whose identity was not revealed, posed as Dmytro Kuleba, a former Ukrainian foreign minister, according to a notice sent to the senator’s office warning him to be on the lookout for similar attempts.
Punchbowl was the first to report details about deepfakes.
A notice issued by the Senate Security Agency on Monday said that amid a recent surge in social engineering threats, “this attempt stands out because of its technical sophistication and credibility.”
The notice detailed an email that Cardin’s office received on Sept. 19 from someone claiming to be Kleba, which devolved into a conversation punctuated with what the notice described as “politically provocative questions related to the upcoming election.”
The notice said Cardin and staff had met with Kleber previously and “when connected over Zoom, appeared to be a live audio and video connection that was consistent in appearance and audio with previous meetings.”
The notification said Caldin and his team began to suspect the call was a scam when the person claiming to be Kuleba “began behaving unusually and pressuring them for answers to questions such as, ‘Do you support the placement of long-range missiles on Russian territory? We want to know your answer.'”
The notice said the caller’s questions were “likely intended to induce the Senator to comment on political candidates.”
The notice said Cardin and his staff hung up the phone, adding that Cardin’s office contacted the State Department, which confirmed that it was not Kuleba who had made the call.
The State Department and Capitol Police did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday night. The FBI declined to comment.
In a statement about the incident released Wednesday night, Cardin called the caller a “bad actor.”
Cardin said the caller “misleadingly tried to talk to me by pretending to be someone I know,” and that he immediately hung up and called authorities, who are investigating.
“It quickly became apparent that the person I was speaking with was not who they said they were, so I hung up the phone. My office acted swiftly and notified the appropriate authorities,” Cardin said.
Cardin’s office declined to comment on the details of the call.
Following the incident, a separate notice was also sent to Senate offices, warning of an “active social engineering campaign” that was “targeting senators and Senate staff.”
The notice, sent by the Cybersecurity Awareness Center and obtained by NBC News, instructs offices on how to respond if they receive suspicious messages or requests for video calls with foreign dignitaries.
“Target(s) are contacted by threat actors posing as representatives of foreign dignitaries and requesting an official video call that is actually malicious,” the second notice states. “This technique is used to discredit victims or obtain additional information. Threat actors leverage existing relationships and other known information to appear legitimate.”
Intelligence officials said the FBI and other government agencies confirmed last month that Iran was behind efforts this year to send materials stolen from former President Donald Trump’s campaign to President Joe Biden’s campaign, even though Biden’s campaign had not requested the information. NBC News reported this month that the Justice Department plans to file criminal charges related to the hacking of the Trump campaign, citing two law enforcement officials.
Frank Thorpe V
Ken Dilanian contributed.
