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Ascii Smuggling

2 GoKawiil briefs on this topic

Microsoft flags phishing campaign hiding invisible Unicode characters in finance-themed emails

Microsoft researchers identified a large phishing operation that inserts invisible Unicode 'Tags' characters inside finance-related keywords—splitting words like 'funding' into fragments—to slip past email filters that scan for suspicious terms. The campaign peaked at 2.37 million daily messages in late February and, despite a drop in volume by May, remains active, with Defender for Office 365 tracing it to 148 finance-themed sender domains.

Microsoft finds spammers hijacking AI-targeted ASCII smuggling to dodge email filters

Microsoft says spammers have repurposed ASCII smuggling, a technique once used mainly to sneak hidden prompt-injection instructions into AI systems, to disguise spam keywords and slip past Office 365 filters. The company detected daily signature hits jump from about 21,000 to over 1.3 million in early February, reaching 2.5 million within days before tapering off by mid-May.