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BREAKING NEWS

Foreign Relations chair targeted in sophisticated deepfake operation

Exclusive: Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Ben Cardin (D-Md.) was recently the target of a sophisticated deepfake operation impersonating a top Ukrainian official, according to three people briefed on the matter and communications reviewed by Punchbowl News.

On Monday morning, the Senate’s security office alerted a select group of leadership aides and security chiefs for various Senate committees about the incident, which occurred earlier this month on the video conference platform Zoom. The FBI is investigating the matter, according to the sources briefed on the investigation.

The notice, which was sent via email, warned staffers to be vigilant about similar efforts. The notice did not name Cardin and only said a “senator” was the target. But the people briefed on the investigation tell us that it was Cardin, who’s set to retire at the end of the year after 18 years in the Senate.

A representative for Cardin declined to comment. A representative for the FBI did not respond to a request for comment.

According to the notice, the individual was impersonating the recently-former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. “Kuleba” was asking questions during the call that the participants thought were bizarre, including: “Do you support long-range missiles into Russian territory? I need to know your answer,” according to the notice sent to senior Senate aides.

The impersonator was speaking in the voice of Kuleba, which sources said they believed was likely recreated using artificial intelligence. The notice stated that the impersonation effort had “technical sophistication and believability.”

The notice sent to top Senate officials added that the individual was asking “politically charged questions in relation to the upcoming election… likely trying to bait the senator into commenting on a political candidate.”

The people briefed on the incident and the ongoing investigation said the Russian government could be behind the effort given the nature of the questions asked. The goal would be to use the conversation for propaganda purposes — for example, goading a powerful U.S. senator into endorsing a major escalation of the Ukraine war.

A separate cybersecurity alert was sent earlier this week to senior Senate aides. The email wasn’t nearly as detailed as the aforementioned, but it warned of an “active social engineering campaign” targeting senators and staff.

More from the alert:

This isn’t the first time senators have been targeted in this manner. In 2018, Russian hackers tried to infiltrate then-Sen. Claire McCaskill’s (D-Mo.) Senate office using a series of so-called “phishing” emails intended to steal aides’ personal information.

That same year, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s (D-N.H.) staff was contacted by someone impersonating a Latvian diplomat seeking information about U.S. sanctions against Russia. The individual tried to set up a phone call between Shaheen and Latvia’s foreign minister.

– Andrew Desiderio