Since late 2025, malicious cyber actors have been targeting prominent victims, their family members, and personal acquaintances by directly messaging personal accounts with malicious links leveraging a technique known as “OAuth consent phishing.”
Recently observed activity includes impersonating government officials, media, and other publicly known personalities on a commercial messaging application (CMA) and soliciting the targeted individual to access a malicious link under the guise of a file sharing service through an application under the malicious actor’s control. Previous phishing campaigns have also impersonated event coordinators and planners, who sent malicious links to targets under the guise of an invitation to an event and the need to verify the target’s identity through a malicious application under the actor’s control.
Read more…
Source: U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation Cyber Division
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- Massive leak of over 115 million US payment cards caused by Chinese “smishing” hackers
August 10, 2025
A wave of advanced phishing campaigns, traced to Chinese-speaking cybercriminal syndicates, may have compromised up to 115 million US payment cards in just over a year, experts have warned. Researchers at SecAlliance revealed these operations represent a growing convergence of social engineering, real-time authentication bypasses, and phishing infrastructure designed to scale. Investigators have identified a figure ...
- Data breach at Central Maine Healthcare exposes patient information
August 1, 2025
Central Maine Healthcare says an unauthorized party gained access to its network on March 19th, and they kept that access until June 1st. After a weeks-long shut down of phone and online services, Central Maine Healthcare officials say patient data was likely compromised during a two and a half month period where a hacker gained access ...
- Minnesota: St. Paul cyber attack sparks reflections, calls to action
July 31, 2025
The recent cyber attack in St. Paul has gained pretty much everyone’s attention in the government technology space. It didn’t hurt that Gov. Tim Walz deployed 13 members of the Minnesota National Guard’s Cyber Protection Unit to help fix the damage — reportedly the first time that unit has deployed inside the state in its eight ...
- Joint Cybersecurity Advisory: Scattered Spider
July 29, 2025
Scattered Spider (also known as, UNC3944, Scatter Swine, Oktapus, Octo Tempest, Storm-0875, and Muddled Libra) engages in data extortion and several other criminal activities. Scattered Spider threat actors use multiple social engineering techniques—including push bombing—and subscriber identity module (SIM) swap attacks, to obtain credentials, install remote access tools, and/or bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA). According to public ...
- Scattered Spider hackers are targeting US critical infrastructure via VMware attacks
July 28, 2025
The infamous ScatteredSpider ransomware group is using VMware instances to target critical infrastructure organizations in the US, researchers have warned. In the campaign, the hackers do not exploit any vulnerabilities, but instead go for “aggressive, creative, and particularly skilled” social engineering. They first reach out to their victim’s IT desk, impersonating an employee, and asking for ...
- NASCAR confirms user data breach following Medusa ransomware attack
July 28, 2025
NASCAR has confirmed it suffered a cyberattack and a data breach in April 2025 which saw personal information of racing fans allegedly stolen. The organization filed data breach reports with attorneys general in multiple US states, describing what had happened, and how it responded, noting the attack started on March 31, 2025, and was spotted – ...