AI-Assisted Phishing Targets Taiwan Research Institutions

• •APT campaign targets Taiwan research organizations using AI-assisted phishing.
• •Phishing emails impersonated legitimate institutions and employed QR code phishing techniques.
• •Adversary-in-the-middle framework intercepted Google credentials and MFA challenges.

An advanced persistent threat (APT) spear-phishing campaign has been identified targeting individuals affiliated with Taiwan research organizations. The campaign utilized AI-assisted content generation to create highly personalized phishing emails that impersonated reputable academic and policy institutions. Attack methods included traditional email phishing and QR code phishing (quishing), where malicious QR codes were embedded in legitimate event posters. The phishing framework employed an adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) technique, allowing real-time interception of Google credentials and multi-factor authentication (MFA) challenges. Cisco Talos reported that the emails exhibited nearly identical structures, suggesting the use of a reusable prompt template for content generation. None of the impersonated institutions could confirm the legitimacy of the senders, indicating that the identities were fabricated. The campaign highlights a significant threat to Taiwan's research community, with potential implications for sensitive information security.