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Scam Attacks Taking Advantage of the Popularity of the Generative AI Wave
Unit 42 finds about 225 generative AI-themed domains registered daily since ChatGPT's launch, with nearly 29 percent suspicious, fueling scams and PUP delivery.
Palo Alto Networks analyzed new domain registrations containing generative AI keywords such as chatgpt, prompt, and sora since ChatGPT's November 2022 launch, observing around 225 GenAI-related registrations per day. About 28.75 percent of these domains are suspicious, a rate 22 times higher than for general new domains, with registration spikes aligning with milestones like Bing ChatGPT integration, the GPT-4 release, new GPTs, and OpenAI's Sora announcement. Over 72 percent of the domains use gpt or chatgpt keywords, and gpt domains show a 76 percent suspicious rate. Case studies cover PUP delivery, spam distribution, and monetized domain parking, with 35 percent of traffic to these domains directed at suspicious ones.
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ASCII smuggling crosses over from AI prompt injection to phishing evasion
Microsoft details high-volume phishing campaign using ASCII smuggling (Unicode tag chars) for filter evasion, peaking at 2.3M messages.
Microsoft researchers observed a high-volume finance-themed phishing campaign using invisible Unicode tag characters (U+E0000–U+E007F), a technique known from AI prompt injection research as ASCII smuggling, to split lure words like 'funding' and evade email filters. Telemetry from Microsoft Defender for Office 365 showed signature hits jump from roughly 21,000 messages on February 8, 2026 to more than 1.3 million on February 9, peaking above 2.3 million on February 11, with elevated weekday activity lasting approximately three months. The discovery emerged from prompt injection protection research, showing AI-era evasion techniques crossing into traditional phishing. Most messages were flagged by layered Defender protections rather than a single Unicode-specific signal.
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I Hijacked a Real Artist's Spotify with AI Music. It Was Disturbingly Easynew
A journalist used DistroKid's loophole to publish an Udio-generated song on Lathe of Heaven's verified Spotify page, exposing a widespread AI music royalty scam.
A 404 Media reporter generated a punk song with Udio and, via a $3.75-per-month DistroKid account, released it under the name of Brooklyn punk band Lathe of Heaven without any identity verification by the distributor or streaming platforms. The AI-generated track appeared a day later on the band's Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Amazon Music and Deezer pages, with royalties flowing to the uploader. Similar abuse has hit deceased musicians such as Blaze Foley, and Spotify says artist profiles that are not actively managed are especially vulnerable.
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New Phishing Campaign Abuses Windows Mshta.exe to Steal Credentials and Secrets
Fortra researchers track an active phishing campaign targeting Spanish speakers that abuses mshta.exe to run HTA payloads for reconnaissance and credential theft.
Fortra's FIRE team says a phishing campaign active since June 2026 targets Spanish-speaking users with invoice ('Facturación') and judicial ('Aviso Judicial') lures, many sent via libero.it/italiaonline.it infrastructure with SCL:-1 markings to bypass anti-spam. Clicking embedded links delivers an HTA launcher executed via mshta.exe, which hides its window off-screen, builds dynamic C2 URLs, and performs reconnaissance using WMI, PowerShell, and environment-variable inspection. A second-stage JavaScript dropper uses HTML smuggling to reconstruct a Base64-encoded ZIP in the browser, delivering a 7-Zip self-extracting executable disguised as a Firefox installer; staged design allows later delivery of credential stealers or ransomware. Defenders are urged to block archivogratuito[.]online and shortener domains goo[.]su, abrir[.]link, and abre[.]ai, and to restrict mshta.exe execution via AppLocker or ASR rules.
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Phishing Attacks Abuse Trusted Email Infrastructure and URL Cloaking to Evade Security Filters
VBSpam Q3 2026 test shows phishers abusing DKIM-aligned domains, Amazon SES, and multi-stage URL cloaking to defeat email filters.
Virus Bulletin's Q3 2026 VBSpam test (AMTSO-LS1-TP207) found phishing campaigns moving payloads past the email itself via browser-fingerprinting gates, redirect chains, and hidden POST requests. Examples include a Dutch McAfee/TotalAV scareware renewal scam, a German overdue-payment Web3 fraud delivered via Amazon SES from DKIM-aligned moolaah.com, and Romanian BCR PSD2 credential phishing embedding IPv6-mapped URLs resolving to 103.193.179.223. Net at Work NoSpamProxy ranked first with a 99.995 score while open-source Rspamd caught only 62.55% of phishing mail.
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Hackers Impersonate IT Support on Microsoft Teams to Take Control of Employee PCs
Microsoft warns of a human-operated campaign where attackers pose as IT support in Teams to gain remote PC control and reach domain controllers.
Microsoft Threat Intelligence observed attackers abusing Microsoft Teams external collaboration to impersonate IT/helpdesk staff, persuading employees to grant screen control via Quick Assist or RMM tools. Operators deploy malicious MSI packages via silent msiexec, run encrypted JavaScript implants through portable Node.js, and persist via EdgeUpdate Run keys or Startup folder entries. The Node.js backdoor uses HTTPS long-polling C2, captures screenshots, enumerates Active Directory, and moves laterally over WinRM (TCP 5985) to domain controllers and certificate authorities. Initial access maps to MITRE ATT&CK T1566.003 (Spearphishing via Service); no Teams vulnerability is exploited.
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ASCII smuggling isn't just an AI security risk
Microsoft tracked a phishing campaign peaking at 2.37 million daily messages that hid financial-lure keywords with invisible Unicode tag characters to evade filters.
Microsoft researchers uncovered a large phishing campaign that inserted invisible Unicode tag characters (e.g., U+E0020) inside common financial keywords like 'funding', splitting words so keyword, signature, and regex matches fail. The campaign peaked at more than 2.37 million messages in late February 2026, ran from about 150 finance-themed sender domains on a strict weekday-only schedule, and gradually declined to under 20% of peak weekday volume by late March, with residual spikes through mid-June. The technique repurposes ASCII smuggling, normally used for indirect prompt injection against AI assistants, for traditional email phishing evasion. Microsoft advises defenders to strip or fold invisible Unicode code points before content matching and to watch for bulk weekday spikes from churning finance-themed domains.
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Phishing Campaign Sends Millions of Emails Using Invisible Unicode to Evade Filters
Microsoft warns of a high-volume phishing campaign using invisible Unicode characters to split keywords like 'funding' and evade filters, peaking at 2.37 million daily messages.
Microsoft's Security Research team documented a high-volume phishing operation inserting deprecated Unicode Tags characters (U+E0000-U+E007F) inside financial keywords such as 'funding' so literal-string and regex email filters stop matching them. The campaign ran on a weekly cadence with 1-2.37 million weekday messages between February and May 15, 2026, peaking on February 26, 2026. It used hundreds of disposable finance-themed sender domains and relayed mail through ActiveCampaign's click-tracking infrastructure (acemlnd[.]com, activehosted[.]com), lending legitimate platform reputation. Microsoft ties the activity to an AI-assisted SBA loan phishing campaign that Fortra's FIRE team disclosed in September 2025.
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Outsider Phishing Kit Survives Takedown With 700 New Pages
Group-IB found the Outsider phishing kit kept generating 700+ new phishing pages within a month of Operation Ghost Hook's takedown.
Group-IB linked the Outsider Phishing Kit, operated by a threat actor known as ChenLun, to more than 100,000 phishing pages across 54+ countries between December 2025 and May 2026. After the FBI, Google, and Lumen's Black Lotus Labs seized core admin servers, a Shopify storefront, about $100,000, and thousands of domains under Operation Ghost Hook in June, over 700 new phishing domains appeared within a month. The kit offered 267 templates, adversary-in-the-middle MFA interception, WebSocket-based live operator communication, and SMS delivery via a Telegram affiliate ecosystem with more than 5,000 subscribers.
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Inside Knight Office, a New M365 AiTM Phishing Kit
Huntress details Knight Office, a new AiTM phishing kit stealing Microsoft 365 session tokens and registering attacker-controlled devices.
Huntress investigated an August 18, 2026 adversary-in-the-middle attack using the Knight Office phishing kit, which captured Microsoft 365 session tokens via a DocuSign-style lure routed through a Monday.com tracking link and a compromised Joomla site. After token capture, the actor enrolled an unauthorized host in Microsoft Entra ID and bound a Windows Hello for Business key credential to the account. The kit's operator console, found at IP 104.37.188.94, is built on Python Flask and hosts at least 25 .vu phishing domains. Telemetry links the kit to at least nine token-replay logins in two weeks and roughly 700 reported lure emails since April.
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⚡ Weekly Recap: NFC Fraud, Curly COMrades, N
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