The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is releasing this FLASH to alert NGOs, think tanks, academia, and other foreign policy experts with a nexus to North Korea of evolving tactics employed by the North Korean state-sponsored cyber threat group Kimsuky and to provide mitigation recommendations.
As of 2025, Kimsuky actors have targeted think tanks, academic institutions, and both U.S. and foreign government entities with embedded malicious Quick Response (QR) codes in spearphishing campaigns. This type of spearphishing attack is referred to as Quishing. Quishing (QR Code Phishing) is a phishing technique in which adversaries embed malicious URLs inside QR codes to force victims to pivot from their corporate endpoint to a mobile device, bypassing traditional email security controls. Tracked by MITRE ATT&CK as [T1660],
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Source: U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation
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