Warning From the FBI – Former FBI Employees are being targeted.
Social media is today’s great connecter. We can catch up with friends and network with those who share our interests and expertise. During the isolation of the pandemic, it’s often been the sole way to connect with others. But as many of you know especially well, social media has a dark side. It renders participants perpetually accessible and tends to lower barriers to sharing, something foreign intelligence services are increasingly capitalizing on. In one example of this, foreign intelligence officers pose as headhunters and consultants and target hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans yearly with tempting but false “professional opportunities" through social media channels.
As we closed out September's National Insider Threat Awareness Month and began October's Cybersecurity Awareness Month, the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's (ODNI) National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) publicly debuted a new movie called "The Nevernight Connection." Inspired by true events, the 30-minute movie details the fictional account of a former U.S. Intelligence Community official who was targeted by a foreign intelligence service via a fake professional networking site and recruited to turn over classified information. We are disseminating this movie and other resources to help current and former government employees, as well as the private sector and academic community, recognize fake online profiles, realize the threat they pose, and report these suspicious approaches to appropriate authorities.
Our former-FBI employees are also targets, both from your careers at the FBI and, for many of you, from your careers in sensitive industries after you leave the Bureau. We must all protect ourselves from these sophisticated but seemingly innocuous threats found on social media sites. I encourage you to take some time to watch "The Nevernight Connection" and explore both the FBI's and NCSC's sites further detailing this threat and the steps you can take to protect yourselves, inform your former and current colleagues, and report if you suspect you or someone you know is being targeted.
Brian P. Hale
Assistant Director
Office of Public Affairs (OPA)
FBI