Reported by 1 outlet
US Offers $10 Million Bounty for Russian Intelligence Hackers as Messaging App Attacks Evolve to Steal Backup Recovery Keys
Why this score
- Breadth
- 0.50 / 2.0 · 1 source
- Authority
- 1.80 / 2.0 · best outlet weight
- Severity
- 0.70 / 5.0 · CVSS + content signals
- Velocity
- 0.00 / 2.0 · updates in 48h
- Pickup speed
- 0.00 / 0.6 · time to second source
- Recency
- × 0.00 temporal multiplier
- Community
- + 0.00 / 1.5 · reddit signal
- Score
- 0.0 / 10 = base × recency + community
Timeline
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original reporting
US Offers $10 Million Bounty for Russian Intelligence Hackers as Messaging App Attacks Evolve to Steal Backup Recovery Keys
securityweek.com · 107d ago · June 29th, 2026
The U.S. Department of State is offering rewards of up to $10 million for information on individuals linked to UNC5792 (FSB Border Guards) and UNC4221 (Russian military services), two threat actor groups targeting current and former U.S. government officials, military leaders, allied personnel, and Ukrainian targets through phishing campaigns against commercial messaging applications.
In a March alert, CISA and the FBI documented how the groups pose as automated support accounts for Signal and WhatsApp to trick victims into sharing verification codes and taking over accounts. A fresh update reveals the attackers have escalated tactics — they are now asking victims for their Backup Recovery Keys, granting access to historical private and group messages. Critically, even if a victim reclaims their account, the stolen recovery key remains valid for future re-compromise of any new account using the same phone number. The only remediation is generating a new Backup Recovery Key, though this does not prevent the attacker from already having downloaded the account's backup data.