Loading story…
A large-scale phishing campaign sent 26,589 fake voicemail emails to more than 5,500 organizations between June 1 and August 4, using malicious SVG attachments to evade email security controls. The broadly distributed, non-targeted messages impersonated internal senders, personalized subject lines with recipients’ email local parts, and were largely delivered in weekday waves.
The attachments were disguised as voicemail notifications and declared with the anomalous text/plain MIME type despite containing SVG/XML content. Embedded, obfuscated JavaScript used deferred execution and runtime script injection to retrieve remote content. Native Microsoft spam filtering assigned 75% of the messages Spam Confidence Level 0 or 1, classifying them as non-spam or low-confidence spam and allowing the campaign to bypass many standard defenses.
Get the infrastructure and lures behind it.
3 events from the most recent confirmed update back to the earliest known activity.
INKY observed campaign waves through August 4, totaling 26,589 phishing messages across 5,527 organizations. Native Microsoft filtering assigned 75% of the messages Spam Confidence Level 0 or 1, treating them as non-spam.
The campaign's largest observed spike delivered 2,432 messages to 1,149 organizations.
A broad phishing campaign began using SVG attachments disguised as internal voicemail notifications. The attachments mislabeled active SVG/XML content as text/plain and concealed obfuscated JavaScript that fetched remote content.
Get the infrastructure, lures, and IOCs behind this campaign, ready to push into your email and identity stack.
2 references tracked. Mallory keeps watching after this page renders.
Map indicators from this story to your assets and identify affected systems in minutes.
Every observed campaign, victim, and pivot linked to actors named in this story.
Malware, exploits, and IOCs connected to the activity described here.
YARA, Sigma, and Snort rules deployed to your SIEM as soon as they’re published.
Get matching new stories delivered to your team as they break — not the next morning.
Ask questions about this story and take action on the answers.
Other stories Mallory is tracking that overlap on entities, sources, or topic labels.
Microsoft Threat Intelligence identified a sophisticated phishing campaign targeting U.S.-based organizations, leveraging artificial intelligence to craft highly convincing and evasive attacks. The campaign was detected in late August 2025 and involved the use of compromised small business email accounts to distribute phishing emails. These emails masqueraded as legitimate file-sharing notifications, enticing recipients to open an attachment that appeared to be a PDF but was actually a Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file. The attackers exploited the SVG format's flexibility, embedding dynamic and interactive code that could bypass many traditional security tools. Instead of using standard obfuscation techniques, the malicious payload was hidden within the SVG file by encoding it with a sequence of business-related terms, such as 'revenue,' 'operations,' and 'risk,' making the file appear as standard business data. This approach allowed the attackers to disguise the true intent of the file, which was to redirect users to a fake sign-in page designed to harvest credentials. Microsoft noted that the code within the SVG was likely generated or enhanced using large language models (LLMs), a form of AI that can produce complex, human-like text and code, further complicating detection efforts. The phishing emails also employed a self-addressed tactic, where the sender and recipient addresses matched, with actual targets hidden in the BCC field to evade basic detection heuristics. SVG files are particularly attractive to attackers because they are text-based, scriptable, and support features like invisible elements, encoded attributes, and delayed script execution, all of which can be used to sidestep static analysis and security scanning. Microsoft responded by using its own AI-powered security tools to analyze and block the campaign, highlighting the growing trend of AI versus AI in cybersecurity defense and offense. The campaign underscores the increasing adoption of AI by threat actors to automate the creation of convincing phishing lures and obfuscated malware. The use of compromised business email accounts added legitimacy to the phishing attempts, increasing the likelihood of successful credential theft. The incident demonstrates the evolving threat landscape, where attackers continuously adapt their methods to outpace security defenses. Organizations are advised to enhance their email security protocols, educate users about the risks of unexpected file attachments, and deploy advanced detection tools capable of analyzing complex file formats like SVG. The campaign serves as a warning that traditional security measures may be insufficient against AI-driven threats, necessitating a proactive and adaptive security posture. Microsoft’s public disclosure of the attack provides valuable intelligence for defenders to recognize and mitigate similar threats in the future. The incident also highlights the importance of monitoring for unusual email behaviors, such as self-addressed messages and unexpected file types. As AI becomes more accessible to both attackers and defenders, the arms race in cybersecurity is expected to intensify, with increasingly sophisticated attacks targeting organizations of all sizes.
Jun 29, 2026
Security researchers warned that attackers are increasingly weaponizing **SVG** files by embedding JavaScript and other active content into files that are often treated as harmless images. Recent campaigns used malicious SVG attachments and links for **phishing**, **credential harvesting**, **malware delivery**, and **browser-based abuse**, including fake voicemail lures, self-contained phishing pages rendered directly from the SVG, and redirectors that sent victims to attacker-controlled domains. Analysis of recent samples found SVGs capable of obfuscated script execution, DOM manipulation, data exfiltration, and other in-browser actions that can bypass traditional defenses focused on conventional executables. Researchers linked one SVG-delivered script to a WordPress browser brute-force abuse pattern previously observed in 2024, while 2026 activity more commonly relied on redirects and embedded phishing content. Defenders were urged to treat SVGs as **active executable content**, inspect them for embedded scripts, and strengthen email and web filtering; published indicators included **three domains** and **22 SHA-1 hashes** tied to the activity.
Jul 23, 2026
A sophisticated phishing campaign has been identified targeting users in Colombia by impersonating official judicial notifications from the 17th Municipal Civil Court of the Bogotá Circuit. The attackers crafted emails in Spanish, leveraging local institutional details to increase the credibility of the lure. The phishing emails claim to contain a lawsuit notification and prompt recipients to open an attached SVG file. This SVG file is weaponized to initiate a multi-stage infection chain. Upon opening, the SVG file triggers the execution of a malicious HTA (HTML Application) file, which is a common technique for bypassing traditional email security filters. The HTA file then executes a VBS (Visual Basic Script) file, which in turn runs a PowerShell script. This PowerShell script acts as a downloader and loader, ultimately injecting the AsyncRAT remote access trojan into a legitimate Windows process to evade detection. AsyncRAT is a well-known remote access tool that allows attackers to gain persistent control over infected systems, exfiltrate data, and potentially deploy additional payloads. The campaign employs anti-virtual machine techniques to avoid analysis and uses persistence mechanisms to maintain access on compromised hosts. Security researchers have observed that the use of SVG files for initial infection is increasing, as these files can bypass some security controls due to their perceived harmlessness. The campaign demonstrates a high level of technical sophistication, chaining multiple scripting languages and file types to obfuscate the attack and evade endpoint detection. The malicious files have been identified and their MD5 hashes documented for threat intelligence sharing. Detection signatures have been updated by security vendors such as Quick Heal and Seqrite to identify and block the components of this attack. The campaign is notable for its targeted approach, focusing on Colombian users and leveraging local judicial terminology to increase the likelihood of success. The use of AsyncRAT as the final payload provides attackers with extensive capabilities for surveillance, data theft, and further lateral movement within affected organizations. Security teams are advised to educate users about the risks of opening unexpected attachments, especially those purporting to be from legal or government institutions. Organizations should also ensure that email security solutions are updated to detect SVG-based threats and that endpoint protection is capable of identifying the multi-stage infection chain. The incident highlights the evolving tactics of threat actors in using file formats and social engineering tailored to specific regions and institutions.
Jun 29, 2026