China-linked hackers impersonated former U.S. officials and a senior Anthropic employee in phishing campaigns aimed at artificial-intelligence policy experts, attempting to steal access to their Microsoft cloud accounts. Defense One reported the findings from cybersecurity company Proofpoint, which identified the activity in campaigns targeting researchers at think tanks, universities and law firms.
The attackers began by sending invitations related to AI policy, export controls and supply chains. After a recipient responded, the attackers followed up with a link to a fraudulent OneDrive page designed to capture Microsoft login credentials. Proofpoint did not disclose how many people were targeted, whether any accounts were compromised or whether the operation obtained information.
The campaign identified by Proofpoint began July 8 and used the identities of Lynne Parker and Heidi Crebo-Rediker. Parker is a former principal deputy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. She also served as assistant director for AI and founding director of the National AI Initiative Office. Crebo-Rediker was the State Department’s first chief economist and previously served as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s chief of international finance and economics.
Messages sent in Parker’s name invited AI experts to participate in a purported advisory group focused on AI policy. Other messages, sent in Crebo-Rediker’s name, sought contributions to a supposed Senate Foreign Relations Committee report on AI export controls and supply chains. The subjects matched the policy areas associated with the two former officials, allowing the messages to resemble ordinary professional outreach before the attackers directed recipients toward the credential-harvesting page.
Parker confirmed that she learned about the impersonation on July 9, after two recipients contacted her through separate channels to ask whether she had sent the emails. She told them the messages were fraudulent and alerted other colleagues.
Proofpoint attributed the activity to TA419, which it described as a China-aligned group supporting Beijing’s intelligence interests. The company said the group has consistently shown interest in targets connected to defense, national security, energy, international relations and foreign policy, particularly those linked to the United States and Japan. Proofpoint characterized the focus on AI policy experts as an extension of that targeting pattern rather than a change in direction.
The same group used a similar approach in February, Proofpoint said, when it impersonated an unnamed senior Anthropic employee in an email to an AI policy analyst at a U.S. think tank. The message used the subject line “Request for Feedback on Military Integration of Claude,” referring to debate over military use of Anthropic’s AI models. Proofpoint did not identify the employee whose identity was copied.
Proofpoint also found that the attackers registered web addresses impersonating the Heritage Foundation, Japan’s defense minister Shinjiro Koizumi and the Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association. The registrations were part of the broader impersonation activity identified by the company. Proofpoint said the attackers would likely continue targeting think tanks and policy experts working on technologies and in regions of interest to the Chinese government, while continuing to spoof real subject-matter experts.
The operation illustrates a phishing pattern in which attackers combine an impersonated individual with a plausible policy request. In this case, the messages sought to engage people working on AI and related policy questions before presenting them with a fake Microsoft login page. The campaign’s targets included researchers in institutions that work on technology, government policy and international affairs, areas that overlap with the group’s previously identified interests.