Alongside international partners, the National Cyber Security Centre has issued actions for individuals at risk of targeted attacks against messaging apps.

The NCSC and international partners have seen growing malicious activity from Russia-based actors using messaging apps to target high-risk individuals.

Messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Messenger and Signal are an important part of how we communicate every day.

High-risk individuals face a greater likelihood of attacks against their accounts due to a combination of their role and potential access to sensitive information and important people. You might be a high-risk individual if your work or public status means you have access to, or influence over, sensitive information that could be of interest to threat actors.

The NCSC has previously reported on the targeting of government officials’ accounts by China state-affiliated APT31, Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) actor Star Blizzard and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Attackers may try to trick victims in to sharing login credentials and account recovery codes, add their own device to their accounts, join group chats, impersonate people, or use phishing tactics.

To mitigate the chances of an attack, the NCSC has advocated for several steps for high risk individuals.

Not sharing personal information via apps, not sharing verification codes or scanning unexpected sharing codes, and opting to use corporately provided messaging services for work are some first steps.

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Enabling two-step verification and passkeys can also enhance account protection.

Being aware of impersonations and unknown contacts, as well as regularly checking for linked devices and removing those that cannot be verified will provide further defence.

Using disappearing messages can provide further protection to high risk individuals sharing sensitive information.