Description

A sophisticated phishing campaign has been actively targeting users in both Italy and the United States, aiming to harvest Office 365 and Outlook credentials through counterfeit Microsoft OneNote login portals. To evade detection, the attackers host their malicious pages on legitimate platforms such as Notion, Glitch, and Google Docs. The phishing emails trick recipients into entering credentials via fraudulent login options, including Office365, Outlook, and PEC (Italy’s certified email system). This operation has been ongoing since at least January 2022 and employs advanced JavaScript to steal login credentials and IP addresses. The stolen information is then sent via Telegram bots, with multiple bot configurations discovered within the scripts, enhancing the operation’s persistence. After stealing the data, users are often redirected to actual OneNote login pages to avoid raising suspicion. Over the campaign’s duration, the attackers have continually improved their evasion techniques—initially using URL encoding, then briefly experimenting with Base64 obfuscation before shifting fully to Telegram-based data exfiltration. Security researchers emphasize the importance of monitoring network traffic for suspicious Telegram API usage to detect and block unauthorized bot activity. The campaign’s focus on PEC, beyond common corporate email targets, indicates the attackers may be pursuing wider goals, such as breaching secure communications systems. Experts recommend deploying behavioral threat detection systems and enforcing strict network security policies to mitigate the risk from these evolving phishing tactics.