© Reuters. File photo: On March 12, 2019, the FBI logo can be seen outside the FBI J. Edgar Hoover building in Washington, USA. REUTERS / Leah Millis
(Reuters)-According to the FBI and security experts, hackers compromised the FBI’s messaging system on Saturday and sent tens of thousands of messages warning of possible cyber attacks.
The FBI said in a statement that these fake emails appear to come from legitimate FBI email addresses ending in @ic.fbi.gov.
The FBI stated that although the material affected by the incident was “offline immediately after the problem was discovered,” “this is an ongoing situation.”
Threat monitoring organization Spamhaus Project stated on its Twitter (NYSE:) account that hackers have sent tens of thousands of emails warning of possible cyber attacks.
A copy of an email that Spamhaus posted on Twitter had the subject “Urgent: System Threats”, which appeared to end with the approval of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The FBI is part of the Justice Department.
Bloomberg News reported on the incident on Saturday.
According to the FBI statement, both the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are aware of the incident.