A new phishing campaign that was recently intercepted by the Russian state-backed hackers was able to bypass the protection provided by Google on Gmail through a multi-factor authentication (MFA) through social engineering by inducing victims to generate and transmit application-specific passwords. This is UNC6293, characterized by the Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) of Google and believed to have been operated by the same group, APT29 (Cozy Bear), and has attacked high-profile representatives, such as researchers and opponents of the Russian government during April and June 2025. The hackers were impersonating USA department of state officials by using potentially spoofed Gmail accounts and then copying over genuine looking @state.gov email addresses to appear credible. The attack was more pre-meditated and progressive so as to increase the chances of the attacked to be more collaborative. In one of the cases the threat actor wished to lure an academic expert into a one-on-one online conversation gaining entry into a secure State Department discussion board. The victim was instructed to create an app-specific password used by Google and provided to him or her to use to access something as a guest entirely to avail of the lesser-secure apps created before. As a matter of fact, this gave the attacker full access to the victim Gmail profile. Phishing training was carefully crafted to make the process sound like the usual safe procedure based on the prevailing trust in governmental institutions of the US and the lack of knowledge about the account security parameters. The experts advise activation of Google Advanced Protection Program (APP) to combat these kinds of attacks, the obstruction of the use of app-specific passwords, and insist on increased security of the account. Users are obliged to validate suspicious communication especially, that of the government or high-profile groups and must never share credentials at all costs. The organizations also must train those who are most exposed to detect the slow-burn social engineering attacks and enhance safe, direct methods of communication.
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