FBI: Spike in Hacked Police Emails, Fake Subpoenas

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is urging police departments and governments worldwide to beef up security around their email systems, citing a recent increase in cybercriminal services that use hacked police email accounts to send unauthorized subpoenas and customer data requests to U.S.-based technology companies.

In an alert (PDF) published this week, the FBI said it has seen an uptick in postings on criminal forums regarding the process of emergency data requests (EDRs) and the sale of email credentials stolen from police departments and government agencies.

“Cybercriminals are likely gaining access to compromised US and foreign government email addresses and using them to conduct fraudulent emergency data requests to US based companies, exposing the personal information of customers to further use for criminal purposes,” the FBI warned.

In the United States, when federal, state or local law enforcement agencies wish to obtain information about an account at a technology provider — such as the account’s email address, or what Internet addresses a specific cell phone account has used in the past — they must submit an official court-ordered warrant or subpoena.

Virtually all major technology companies serving large numbers of users online have departments that routinely review and process such requests, which are typically granted (eventually, and at least in part) as long as the proper documents are provided and the request appears to come from an email address connected to an actual police department domain name.

In some cases, a cybercriminal will offer to forge a court-approved subpoena and send that through a hacked police or government email account. But increasingly, thieves are relying on fake EDRs, which allow investigators to attest that people will be bodily harmed or killed unless a request for account data is granted expeditiously.

The trouble is, these EDRs largely bypass any official review and do not require the requester to supply any court-approved documents. Also, it is difficult for a company that receives one of these EDRs to immediately determine whether it is legitimate.

In this scenario, the receiving company finds itself caught between two unsavory outcomes: Failing to immediately comply with an EDR — and potentially having someone’s blood on their hands — or possibly leaking a customer record to the wrong person.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, compliance with such requests tends to be extremely high. For example, in its most recent transparency report (PDF) Verizon said it received more than 127,000 law enforcement demands for customer data in the second half of 2023 — including more than 36,000 EDRs — and that the company provided records in response to approximately 90 percent of requests.

One English-speaking cybercriminal who goes by the nicknames “Pwnstar” and “Pwnipotent” has been selling fake EDR services on both Russian-language and English cybercrime forums. Their prices range from $1,000 to $3,000 per successful request, and they claim to control “gov emails from over 25 countries,” including Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Hungary, India, Kenya, Jordan, Lebanon, Laos, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Vietnam.

“I cannot 100% guarantee every order will go through,” Pwnstar explained. “This is social engineering at the highest level and there will be failed attempts at times. Don’t be discouraged. You can use escrow and I give full refund back if EDR doesn’t go through and you don’t receive your information.”

A review of EDR vendors across many cybercrime forums shows that some fake EDR vendors sell the ability to send phony police requests to specific social media platforms, including forged court-approved documents. Others simply sell access to hacked government or police email accounts, and leave it up to the buyer to forge any needed documents.

“When you get account, it’s yours, your account, your liability,” reads an ad in October on BreachForums. “Unlimited Emergency Data Requests. Once Paid, the Logins are completely Yours. Reset as you please. You would need to Forge Documents to Successfully Emergency Data Request.”

Still other fake EDR service vendors claim to sell hacked or fraudulently created accounts on Kodex, a startup that aims to help tech companies do a better job screening out phony law enforcement data requests. Kodex is trying to tackle the problem of fake EDRs by working directly with the data providers to pool information about police or government officials submitting these requests, with an eye toward making it easier for everyone to spot an unauthorized EDR.

If police or government officials wish to request records regarding Coinbase customers, for example, they must first register an account on Kodexglobal.com. Kodex’s systems then assign that requestor a score or credit rating, wherein officials who have a long history of sending valid legal requests will have a higher rating than someone sending an EDR for the first time.

It is not uncommon to see fake EDR vendors claim the ability to send data requests through Kodex, with some even sharing redacted screenshots of police accounts at Kodex.

Matt Donahue is the former FBI agent who founded Kodex in 2021. Donahue said just because someone can use a legitimate police department or government email to create a Kodex account doesn’t mean that user will be able to send anything. Donahue said even if one customer gets a fake request, Kodex is able to prevent the same thing from happening to another.

Kodex told KrebsOnSecurity that over the past 12 months it has processed a total of 1,597 EDRs, and that 485 of those requests (~30 percent) failed a second-level verification. Kodex reports it has suspended nearly 4,000 law enforcement users in the past year, including:

-1,521 from the Asia-Pacific region;
-1,290 requests from Europe, the Middle East and Asia;
-460 from police departments and agencies in the United States;
-385 from entities in Latin America, and;
-285 from Brazil.

Donahue said 60 technology companies are now routing all law enforcement data requests through Kodex, including an increasing number of financial institutions and cryptocurrency platforms. He said one concern shared by recent prospective customers is that crooks are seeking to use phony law enforcement requests to freeze and in some cases seize funds in specific accounts.

“What’s being conflated [with EDRs] is anything that doesn’t involve a formal judge’s signature or legal process,” Donahue said. “That can include control over data, like an account freeze or preservation request.”

In a hypothetical example, a scammer uses a hacked government email account to request that a service provider place a hold on a specific bank or crypto account that is allegedly subject to a garnishment order, or party to crime that is globally sanctioned, such as terrorist financing or child exploitation.

A few days or weeks later, the same impersonator returns with a request to seize funds in the account, or to divert the funds to a custodial wallet supposedly controlled by government investigators.

“In terms of overall social engineering attacks, the more you have a relationship with someone the more they’re going to trust you,” Donahue said. “If you send them a freeze order, that’s a way to establish trust, because [the first time] they’re not asking for information. They’re just saying, ‘Hey can you do me a favor?’ And that makes the [recipient] feel valued.”

Echoing the FBI’s warning, Donahue said far too many police departments in the United States and other countries have poor account security hygiene, and often do not enforce basic account security precautions — such as requiring phishing-resistant multifactor authentication.

How are cybercriminals typically gaining access to police and government email accounts? Donahue said it’s still mostly email-based phishing, and credentials that are stolen by opportunistic malware infections and sold on the dark web. But as bad as things are internationally, he said, many law enforcement entities in the United States still have much room for improvement in account security.

“Unfortunately, a lot of this is phishing or malware campaigns,” Donahue said. “A lot of global police agencies don’t have stringent cybersecurity hygiene, but even U.S. dot-gov emails get hacked. Over the last nine months, I’ve reached out to CISA (the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) over a dozen times about .gov email addresses that were compromised and that CISA was unaware of.”

Two U.S. Men Charged in 2022 Hacking of DEA Portal

Two U.S. men have been charged with hacking into a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) online portal that taps into 16 different federal law enforcement databases. Both are alleged to be part of a larger criminal organization that specializes in using fake emergency data requests from compromised police and government email accounts to publicly threaten and extort their victims.

Prosecutors for the Eastern District of New York today unsealed criminal complaints against Sagar Steven Singh — a.k.a “Weep” — a 19-year-old from Pawtucket, Rhode Island; and Nicholas Ceraolo, 25, of Queens, NY, who allegedly went by the handles “Convict” and “Ominus.”

The Justice Department says Singh and Ceraolo belong to a group of cybercriminals known to its members as “ViLE,” who specialize in obtaining personal information about third-party victims, which they then use to harass, threaten or extort the victims, a practice known as “doxing.”

“ViLE is collaborative, and the members routinely share tactics and illicitly obtained information with each other,” prosecutors charged.

The government alleges the defendants and other members of ViLE use various methods to obtain victims’ personal information, including:

-tricking customer service employees;
-submitting fraudulent legal process to social media companies to elicit users’ registration information;
-co-opting and corrupting corporate insiders;
-searching public and private online databases;
-accessing a nonpublic United States government database without authorization
-unlawfully using official email accounts belonging to other countries.

The complaint says once they obtained a victim’s information, Singh and Ceraolo would post the information in an online forum. The government refers to this community only as “Forum-1,” saying that it is administered by the leader of ViLE (referenced in the complaint as “CC-1”).

“Victims are extorted into paying CC-1 to have their information removed from Forum-1,” prosecutors allege. “Singh also uses the threat of revealing personal information to extort victims into giving him access to their social media accounts, which Singh then resells.”

Sources tell KrebsOnSecurity in addition to being members of ViLE, both Weep and Ominous are or were staff members for Doxbin, a highly toxic online community that provides a forum for digging up personal information on people and posting it publicly. This is supported by the Doxbin administrator’s claimed responsibility for a high-profile intrusion at the DEA’s law enforcement data sharing portal last year.

The government alleges that on May 7, 2022, Singh used stolen credentials to log into a U.S. federal government portal without authorization. The complaint doesn’t specify which agency portal was hacked, but it does state that the portal included access to law enforcement databases that track narcotics seizures in the United States.

On May 12, 2022, KrebsOnSecurity broke the news that hackers had gained access to a DEA portal that taps into 16 different federal law enforcement databases. As reported at the time, the inside scoop on how that hack went down came from KT, the current administrator of the Doxbin and the individual referenced in the government’s complaint as “CC-1.”

Indeed, a screenshot of the ViLE group website includes the group’s official roster, which lists KT at the top, followed by Weep and Ominus.

In March 2022, KrebsOnSecurity warned that multiple cybercrime groups were finding success with fraudulent Emergency Data Requests (EDRs), wherein the hackers use compromised police and government email accounts to file warrantless data requests with social media firms and mobile telephony providers, attesting that the information being requested can’t wait for a warrant because it relates to an urgent matter of life and death.

That story showed that the previous owner of the Doxbin also was part of a teenage hacking group that specialized in offering fake EDRs as a service on the dark web.

Prosecutors say they tied Singh to the government portal hack because he connected to it from an Internet address that he’d previously used to access a social media account registered in his name. When they raided Singh’s residence on Sept. 8, 2022 and seized his devices, investigators with Homeland Security found a cellular phone and laptop that allegedly “contained extensive evidence of access to the Portal.”

The complaint alleges that between February 2022 and May 2022, Ceraolo used an official email account belonging to a Bangladeshi police official to pose as a police officer in communication with U.S.-based social media platforms.

“In these communications, Ceraolo requested personal information about users of these platforms, under the false pretense that the users were committing crimes or in life-threatening danger,” the complaint states.

For example, on or about March 13, 2022, Ceraolo allegedly used the Bangladeshi police email account to falsely claim that the target of the EDR had sent bomb threats, distributed child pornography and threatened officials of the Bangladeshi government.

On or about May 9, 2022, the government says, Singh sent a friend screenshots of text messages between himself and someone he had doxed on the Doxbin and was trying to extort for their Instagram handle. The data included the victim’s Social Security number, driver’s license number, cellphone number, and home address.

“Look familiar?” Singh allegedly wrote to the victim. “You’re gonna comply to me if you don’t want anything negative to happen to your parents. . . I have every detail involving your parents . . . allowing me to do whatever I desire to them in malicious ways.”

Neither of the defendants could be immediately reached for comment. KT, the current administrator of Doxbin, declined a request for comment on the charges.

Ceraolo is a self-described security researcher who has been credited in many news stories over the years with discovering security vulnerabilities at AT&T, T-Mobile, Comcast and Cox Communications.

Ceraolo’s stated partner in most of these discoveries — a 30-year-old Connecticut man named Ryan “Phobia” Stevenson — was charged in 2019 with being part of a group that stole millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies via SIM-swapping, a crime that involves tricking a mobile provider into routing a target’s calls and text messages to another device.

In 2018, KrebsOnSecurity detailed how Stevenson earned bug bounty rewards and public recognition from top telecom companies for finding and reporting security holes in their websites, all the while secretly peddling those same vulnerabilities to cybercriminals.

According to the Justice Department, if convicted Ceraolo faces up to 20 years’ imprisonment for conspiracy to commit wire fraud; both Ceraolo and Singh face five years’ imprisonment for conspiracy to commit computer intrusions.

A copy of the complaint against Ceraolo and Singh is here (PDF).