FBI Warns of Scammers Registering Fake FBI Domains

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), through its Crime Complaint Center (IC3), has issued a warning to the public about scammers registering fake domains using the FBI’s name.

“The FBI has discovered that unknown cyber actors are registering numerous domains that impersonate legitimate FBI websites, which may indicate possible future malicious activity,” the IC3 warned.

Cybercriminals working for governments or motivated by financial gain often use such domains in attacks designed to steal victims’ credentials and financial information, spread malware, and distribute disinformation. These fake domains are typically created by using legitimate domain names with slight misspellings or by using top-level domains like .com or .net instead of .gov, which is used by the official FBI website.

The FBI cautioned that these fake domains could be used to send fraudulent emails, allowing attackers to trick victims into clicking on malicious links.

Although there is currently no evidence that these fake domains have been used in attacks, they could potentially be exploited by state-sponsored hacker groups or ordinary cybercriminals for espionage or financially motivated campaigns targeting businesses and individuals.

Some examples of recently registered fraudulent domains using the “fbi” abbreviation include: fbi-news.com, fbi-intel.com, fbimaryland.org, fbi-fraud.com, fbi-ny.com, fbi-gov.network, fbiusagov.com, fbiusgov.com, fbiusa.net, fbi-usa.us, and fbihelp.org. This is just a small sample of the many fake domains that have been registered recently.