“E-mail prankster” phishes White House officials; hilarity ensues

Over the past few weeks, a self-described "e-mail prankster" has posed as members of President Donald Trump's administration in a series of e-mails to White House officials, publishing responses to Twitter for comedic effect. Among the targets were Trump's top homeland security advisor Tom Bossert—who volunteered his personal e-mail address to the prankster because Bossert believed he was interacting with Jared Kushner. In the e-mail, the faux Kushner invited Bossert for a "soirée" with food better than the two had eaten together on their Iraq visit.

Now-deposed White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci was also repeatedly targeted by the prankster, who the prankster addressed while posing as deposed White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, Ambassador Jon Huntsman, and Scaramucci's friend Andrew Schwartz. Some of the Scaramucci responses to the e-mails were posted to Twitter under the @sinon_reborn account.

Reince (me) giving @Scaramucci something to think about. He never replied haha pic.twitter.com/hutjACmogR

— EMAIL PRANKSTER (@SINON_REBORN) August 1, 2017

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders acknowledged the legitimacy of the e-mails to CNN, saying that the administration takes "all cyber related issues very seriously."

The handle Sinon_Reborn is a reference to the Greek warrior who in Virgil's Aeneid convinces the Trojans to wheel that big wooden horse into their city. The prankster has a crowdfunding page to help finance writing a book based on the pranks (this person apparently lives in Manchester, England). The e-mails did not include malicious attachments like Sinon's horse, but they demonstrate the credulity of some of those in Trump's circle, much as a Gizmodo phish experiment did in May.

Also targeted were Trump's ambassador-select for Russia Jon Huntsman (with e-mails from a fake Eric Trump account) and Eric Trump (with fake e-mails from Donald Trump Jr.). Some of this prankster's previous targets have included UK Member of Parliament (and Brexit campaigner) Boris Johnson, Boeing Chairman and CEO Dennis Muilenburg, and the CEOs of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.