Former Germany’s foreign intelligence VP hit in Signal account takeover campaign

A wave of targeted phishing and account-takeover attacks has compromised Signal and WhatsApp accounts of high-value targets (officials, journalists, military personnel) by tricking victims into sharing verification codes or scanning malicious QR codes to link attacker-controlled devices; Dutch, German and Google threat analysts attribute the campaign to Russia-linked actors and warn of exfiltration of message data and misuse of legitimate app features.