Targeting user data: Fake requests to tech companies in the name of the FBI

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Large tech companies such as Meta are often obliged to pass on their users' private data to investigating authorities – Criminals are now apparently taking advantage of this by impersonating the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) with such requests. However, criminals in Germany are using a similar scam – with the police themselves.

So-called "emergency data requests" are being faked more and more frequently, the FBI has now warned in a public statement. These are "emergency data requests" that are used when a person's life or property is in immediate danger.

Government email accounts used

According to the report, cyber criminals would use compromised US government email accounts to submit emergency data requests to tech companies based in the USA – such as Apple, Google, Meta or Snap. In this way, the criminals captured users' personal data, such as file folders, emails or chat messages.

Normally, a court order and sufficient evidence of a possible crime are required before authorities are allowed to access such data. Emergency data requests, on the other hand, are intended for cases where there is imminent danger, i.e. there is no time for a court order.

Fake requests are a business

According to the FBI, fakes of such requests are now apparently being offered for sale illegally on the internet. Some of the attempts at deception have also been successful. Access to the governments' email addresses would have enabled the perpetrators to create authentic-looking requests. The captured information was then used to harass the victims, to dox them or to defraud them of money.

The fact that these requests are faked is nothing new, but it is becoming increasingly common – According to the FBI, the number of such incidents increased in August 2024 in particular. According to a Bloomberg report, fake emergency data requests are on the decline in 2021. The perpetrators are mostly teenagers or young adults who hack together.

German police have already been fooled too

The approach is reminiscent of the experience of a former member of the cyberbullying group "New World Order" (NWO), which is active in Germany. Members also posed as law enforcement officers, but deceived the police themselves and accessed data from the POLAS police search system.

The trick used by the NWO members was to call police stations using a false number. The perpetrators then pretended to be police officers who were on a mission. They then went on to claim that they urgently needed the personal details of a person they had picked up and that there were technical problems at their own police station. This apparently worked, as an audio recording published by investigative journalists from RBB shows:

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Criminals often rely on the helpfulness of those responsible. In such a case, they actually have to check the identity of the caller and are not allowed to give out data just like that. But the police are often overwhelmed by attempts at deception of this kind.

And even the FBI cannot really take action against the fake emergency data alerts itself, but can only provide a few general tips for other law enforcement agencies in its communication, such as the use of stronger passwords and multi-factor authentication. The FBI advises tech companies to read emergency data requests particularly critically and to always bear in mind that the perpetrators rely particularly on the pressure exerted by fake emergency scenarios.

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