Chinese hackers impersonated prominent figures to target AI policy experts working for US think tanks, universities, and legal firms.

In July this year, according to Proofpoint researchers, a group tracked as TA419 pretended to be a former member of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy leadership team, Lynne Parker, as well as economist and foreign policy expert Heidi Crebo-Rediker.

In another incident, the group impersonated a senior employee of Anthropic to target an AI policy analyst at a US think tank, asking for feedback on the military integration of Claude.

The credential-phishing campaign started with apparently harmless emails proposing collaboration, for example, by joining an “AI Policy Advisory Committee”.

If the recipient took the bait, the hackers followed up with a multi-stage URL redirection chain that led to an Adversary-in-the-Middle (AitM) credential phishing attack.

This involved using a customized version of the open-source Browser-in-the-Browser (BitB) phishing tool Frameless BitB. This creates a fake browser window inside a webpage: a counterfeit Microsoft login pop-up placed over a page designed to look like a OneDrive document-sharing site.

This page relayed the login to genuine Microsoft infrastructure, allowing the harvesting of Microsoft 365 passwords, MFA codes, and session cookies.

Cloudflare’s content delivery network was used to obscure the backend hosting IP address for its domains, which are mostly registered via NameSilo.

TA419 is a China-aligned and espionage-motivated threat actor that's been carrying out credential phishing campaigns against individuals working for US- and Japan-based think tanks, defense contractors, universities, and law firms since at least April 2025.

"TA419 has consistently shown an interest in defense, national security, energy, international relations, and foreign policy targets, predominantly with a nexus to the US and Japan," said Proofpoint threat intelligence analyst Mark Kelly.

"The targeting of AI policy experts represents an extension of that remit rather than a departure from it."

The campaign, said Proofpoint, seems designed to support wider Chinese intelligence objectives around developments in US AI policy and regulation, as well as strategic competition over AI, export controls, and other critical technologies.

Two years ago, Proofpoint uncovered a similar campaign from the China-linked group UNK_SweetSpecter, targeting Western organizations involved in generative AI. This focused on individuals in academia, government entities, and high-profile private AI firms, including employees at OpenAI.

It said it also regularly observes China-aligned actors targeting other industries, such as semiconductors and rare earths, vital to the supply chain of AI and other strategic technologies.

Organizations likely to be a target of TA419 activity should, said Proofpoint, consider phishing-resistant, origin-bound authentication such as passkeys. Individuals, meanwhile, should be wary of unsolicited emails, and check that they're genuine via another route of communication.

"Proofpoint assesses that TA419 will likely continue targeting think tanks and policy experts working on technologies, and in geographies, of particular interest to the Chinese government," said Kelly. "These campaigns will likely also continue spoofing the identities of real subject-matter experts."