FBI Investigates Phishing Campaign that Impersonated Senior Trump Adviser Susie Wiles via Deepfakes 

• White House deepfake impersonation attack raises alarms over AI-driven threats as the FBI investigates.
• While the breached phone is reportedly a personal one, hackers got access to the contacts of the Chief of Staff.
• Susie Wiles’ contacts were approached using AI-generated voice cloning technology for calls, but also via text.

The FBI is currently investigating a sophisticated cyberattack involving the impersonation of Susie Wiles, Chief of Staff under the Trump administration, targeting prominent Republican officials and business leaders. 

The attackers not only sent fraudulent text messages but also leveraged advanced artificial intelligence voice-cloning technology to initiate convincing phone calls, heightening concerns about the expanding use of deepfake tools in spear phishing campaigns.

According to reports from The Wall Street Journal and corroborated by CBS News and LBC, this breach began when Wiles' personal mobile device was allegedly compromised. 

Investigators suspect that the attackers accessed her contact list to orchestrate targeted social engineering attempts, although it remains unclear whether the compromise originated from her mobile device or from collating public and brokered data. 

Some of the calls reportedly used AI-generated replicas of Wiles’ voice, making this incident a landmark case in the emerging threat landscape of AI-powered impersonation.

High-profile targets received both text messages and calls that appeared to come directly from Wiles, with some solicitations involving sensitive political requests and others attempting fraudulent financial transactions. 

Authorities, however, have not attributed the campaign to any foreign actor, and elements of the attack suggest a blend of political manipulation and traditional cybercriminal objectives.

Security experts are sounding the alarm about the ease with which AI technologies can now undermine established trust channels. 

Last month, a modified version of the encrypted messaging platform Signal, reportedly used by former National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, was hacked by an unknown threat actor that claimed to have infiltrated TeleMessage's backend systems, intercepting data from some of its users’ archive group chats and direct messages.