A suspected Russia-aligned group has been attributed to a phishing campaign that employs device code authentication workflows to steal victims’ Microsoft 365 credentials and conduct account takeover attacks.
The activity, ongoing since September 2025, is being tracked by Proofpoint under the moniker UNK_AcademicFlare.
The attacks involve using compromised email addresses belonging to government and military organizations to strike entities within government, think tanks, higher education, and transportation sectors in the U.S. and Europe.
Authorities in Nigeria have announced the arrest of three “high-profile internet fraud suspects” who are alleged to have been involved in phishing attacks targeting major corporations, including the main developer behind the RaccoonO365 phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) scheme.
The Nigeria Police Force National Cybercrime Centre (NPF–NCCC) said investigations conducted in collaboration with Microsoft and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) led to the identification of Okitipi Samuel, also known as Moses Felix, as the principal suspect and developer of the phishing infrastructure.
“Investigations reveal that he operated a Telegram channel through which phishing links were sold in exchange for cryptocurrency and hosted fraudulent login portals on Cloudflare using stolen or fraudulently obtained email credentials,” the NPF said in a post shared on social media.
Multiple threat actors are compromising Microsoft 365 accounts in phishing attacks that leverage the OAuth device code authorization mechanism.
Attackers trick victims into entering a device code on Microsoft’s legitimate device login page, unknowingly authorizing an attacker-controlled application and granting them access to the target account without stealing credentials or bypassing multi-factor authentication (MFA).
Although the method isn’t new, email security firm Proofpoint says that these attacks have increased significantly in volume since September, and involve both financially motivated cybercriminals like TA2723 and state-aligned threat actors.