Hackers Enter FBI Email System, Send Thousands Of Cyber Attack Alert Messages

FBI - US Domestic Security and Intelligence Service (Photo: Antara)

JAKARTA - Hackers entered the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) e-mail system on Saturday and sent tens of thousands of warning messages about a possible cyberattack, according to FBI agents and security specialists.

Several fake emails appeared to come from an official FBI e-mail address ending in @ic.fbi.gov, the FBI said in a statement.

"Although the hardware affected by the incident was shut down quickly after the discovery of the problem, the situation is still ongoing", the FBI said.

The hackers sent tens of thousands of e-mails warning about possible cyber attacks, the cyber threat tracking organization Spamhaus Project said on its Twitter account.

A copy of the e-mail posted by Spamhaus on Twitter shows the email's title saying "Urgent: Threat actor in the system" and appears to end with approval from the US Department of Homeland Security.

The FBI is part of the US Department of Justice.

Bloomberg News reported on the incident on Saturday.

Neither the FBI nor the US Agency for Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security was aware of the incident, the FBI statement said.