A personal phone, not a government-issued device, belonging to Susie Wiles, was hacked. Additionally, the FBI does not believe that a foreign state was responsible for the attack.
Some lawmakers identified the messages as suspicious when the impostor began asking questions about US President Donald Trump that Wiles would have known the answers to. The report also noted that, in one instance, the hackers requested a cash transfer. Furthermore, the messages reportedly contained grammatical errors and were more formal than Wiles's usual communication style.