Hackers linked to foreign states are increasingly trying to access the Signal and WhatsApp accounts of senior EU officials through phishing. Some campaigns are linked by European intelligence agencies to Russia.
Hackers linked to foreign states are increasingly trying to access the Signal and WhatsApp accounts of senior EU officials through phishing. Some campaigns are linked by European intelligence agencies to Russia.
This is reported by Dark Reading.
The attacks are described in an internal presentation by European cybersecurity experts, shown to EU government officials in July and obtained by Politico. The document named the hijacking of high-ranking officials’ accounts as one of the top cyber threats facing the bloc in 2026. The presentation discussed spear phishing, a form of phishing that targets a specific person. Attackers use information about an official’s job or interests to make their message seem more convincing.
But this was not the only phishing method. For example, in Germany, hackers wrote to high-ranking officials on behalf of the alleged Signal support service. They reported an urgent problem with the security of the account and asked to transfer the PIN code. And in March, the Dutch intelligence services AIVD and MIVD reported that a similar campaign was linked to Russia and affected diplomats, military and civil servants.
Another scheme worked through a QR code. The person was persuaded to scan it, and then the code was linked to the Signal account by another device — already controlled by the attacker. After that, it could receive new messages from the user.
Among the high-profile victims was the President of the Bundestag, Julia Klöckner. The German Federal Prosecutor's Office subsequently opened an investigation on suspicion of espionage. In addition, in the spring, a group of senior European Commission officials were asked to leave their joint chat on Signal due to concerns that it could be targeted.
The European Union currently lacks a single, secure system through which different institutions can exchange sensitive and confidential information. As a result, some countries are already trying to reduce their reliance on commercial messengers. France, Germany, and Belgium have launched their own solutions for civil servants, while Luxembourg, Poland, and the Netherlands are currently working on similar systems.
For example, Germany has BundesMessenger and Belgium has BEAM. Both run on the open Matrix protocol and give the state more control over where data is stored and how accounts are managed.
Previously, dev.ua wrote that the SBU and the FBI exposed a large-scale campaign by Russian special services to hack the messengers of officials, military personnel, and politicians in Ukraine, Europe, and the United States.
