{"id":250349,"date":"2025-07-09T09:09:29","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T09:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/250349\/"},"modified":"2025-07-09T09:09:29","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T09:09:29","slug":"ai-scammer-posing-as-marco-rubio-targets-officials-in-growing-threat-us-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/250349\/","title":{"rendered":"AI scammer posing as Marco Rubio targets officials in growing threat | US news"},"content":{"rendered":"

An unknown fraudster has used artificial intelligence<\/a> to impersonate the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio<\/a>, contacting at least five senior officials.<\/p>\n

According to a state department cable first seen by the Washington Post<\/a> and confirmed by the Guardian, the impostor sent fake voice messages and texts that mimicked Rubio\u2019s voice and writing style to those targets including three foreign ministers, a US governor and a member of Congress.<\/p>\n

The cable, dated 3 July, said the impostor \u201cleft voicemails on Signal for at least two targeted individuals\u201d and sent text messages inviting others to communicate on the platform.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s still a mystery who is behind the Rubio scam, but the cable reads that the goal had been \u201cgaining access to information or accounts\u201d of powerful government officials.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state department is aware of this incident and is currently investigating the matter,\u201d said a senior state department official. \u201cThe department takes seriously its responsibility to safeguard its information and continuously takes steps to improve the department\u2019s cybersecurity posture to prevent future incidents. For security reasons, and due to our ongoing investigation, we are not in a position to offer further details at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The threat of AI impersonators has become increasingly common across government agencies. The state department cable included details that the actor impersonating Rubio created the account in mid-June and was similar to other activity in May when someone impersonated other senior US government officials. That is likely a reference to the impersonator who pretended to be<\/a> White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and reached out to her personal contacts and one lawmaker.<\/p>\n

David Axelrod, who served as senior adviser to Barack Obama, said the AI scam using Rubio was \u201conly a matter of time\u201d and urged urgent action to defend against such attacks.<\/p>\n

\u201cA Marco Rubio<\/a> impostor is using AI voice to call high-level officials,\u201d Axelrod wrote on X. \u201cThis is the new world in which we live and we\u2019d better figure out how to defend against it because of its implications for our democracy and the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An unknown fraudster has used artificial intelligence to impersonate the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, contacting at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,1942,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-250349","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-technology","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114822497176010736","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}