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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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Hackers Use AI-Assisted CEO Emails to Trick Finance Teams Into Sending $50,000 Payments.
Microsoft tracked a million-message AI-assisted BEC campaign impersonating executives with fake ServiceNow invoices to steal ~$50,000 ACH payments.
Microsoft detected over one million messages in a BEC campaign running August 3-5, using AI-assisted phishing templates, executive impersonation, and fabricated ServiceNow subscription invoices to trick finance teams into authorizing fraudulent ACH payments of roughly $50,000. The US received 87.7% of volume. Attackers used lookalike domains like service-nowinc[.]com registered just days before delivery, with no compromise of ServiceNow itself. Telltale signs included verbose HTML comments, uniform formatting, and inconsistent forwarded-message headers.
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SAP September 2026 Security Update Fixes 4 Critical Vulnerabilities and 15 Other Flaws
SAP's September 2026 Patch Tuesday ships 19 security notes, including four criticals led by a CVSS 10.0 memory-corruption flaw in Extended Passport Processing.
SAP released 19 new Security Notes plus one update, fixing four critical vulnerabilities and 15 additional flaws. The most urgent is CVE-2026-44756 (CVSS 10.0), memory corruption in Extended Passport (EPP) Processing affecting many SAP Kernel and Web Dispatcher releases. Other criticals include CVE-2026-58240 (NetWeaver Message Server missing authentication, 9.8), CVE-2026-76969 (credential disclosure in CAP sap/cds-mtxs, 9.4), and CVE-2026-66768 (improper access control in SAP GUI for Java, 9.0). High-severity fixes cover XXE in Integration Suite Trading Partner Management, deserialization in NetWeaver Business Client, and memory corruption in NetWeaver AS for ABAP.
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SAP Security Updates September 2026 – Critical Flaws Patched in SAP NetWeaver, Cloud and Extended Passport
SAP's September 2026 Patch Day fixes 19 notes including CVE-2026-44756 (CVSS 10.0), unauthenticated memory corruption in SAP Extended Passport Processing kernels.
SAP shipped 19 new security notes plus one update across NetWeaver, S/4HANA, Integration Suite, Commerce Cloud, and Cloud Application Programming Model. Top issues include CVE-2026-44756 (CVSS 10.0 memory corruption in SAP Extended Passport Processing across many KERNEL and Web Dispatcher versions), CVE-2026-58240 (CVSS 9.8 missing authentication in NetWeaver Message Server), CVE-2026-76969 (CVSS 9.4 credential disclosure in CAP library sap/cds-mtxs), and CVE-2026-66768 (CVSS 9.0 access control flaw in SAP GUI for Java). No exploitation is reported; organizations running affected kernels are urged to patch urgently.
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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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France’s tax authority admits hackers made off with data on 678,000 individuals
An attacker used stolen credentials and an MFA bypass to steal tax data on 678,000 individuals from France's tax authority DGFiP.
France's General Directorate of Public Finances (DGFiP) disclosed that intrusions into its portals exposed tax data, including reference tax income, family quotient, withholding tax rate, and business identifiers such as company name and SIREN number, on 678,000 individuals and professionals. An attacker using the alias 'ZeroBytes' claimed credit on a cybercrime forum and offered a stolen database for sale, claiming the portal contains data on roughly 20 million citizens. DGFiP suspended the affected accounts, notified the CNIL, and is working with ANSSI and the finance ministry's security office; it said the main online tax portals and their login credentials were not compromised.
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