The FBI is warning organizations and defenders about Kali365, a growing phishing-as-a-service platform that retrieves Microsoft 365 access tokens, issuing a public service announcement Thursday. 

The toolkit bypasses multi-factor authentication and abuses OAuth device code authorizations via phishing lures impersonating common enterprise services. This technique grants cybercriminal-controlled applications access to Microsoft 365 accounts, opening victims up to a host of follow-on malicious activity, including data theft, fraud, extortion and ransomware attacks.

Kali365 is one of many rapidly emerging device-code phishing tools, which are gaining popularity as a more effective means for cybercriminals to circumvent security controls while abusing legitimate Microsoft device authorization pages, according to researchers. 

Instead of gaining access to accounts via phishing kits that steal credentials and second-factor authentication codes, device-code phishing platforms connect a malicious app to a legitimate account with a single code. The process requires fewer steps and less interaction with the user, but victims do have to copy-and-paste a code generated by the Kali365 platform to grant access.

“We see quite a bit of this device-code phishing activity, but so much of it looks really similar. They’re all using the same types of lures, the same types of content, the same branding,” Selena Larson, senior threat researcher at Proofpoint, told CyberScoop. “It is very much AI generated, AI driven, and the threat actors, I think, are finding it pretty effective because we’re seeing this shift happen kind of all at once.”

Proofpoint researchers observed seven device-code phishing tools that looked nearly identical during a 10-day period last month.

Device-code phishing isn’t new, but platforms like Kali365 have integrated new techniques that differ from MFA phishing, and might be more effective as a result. “It’s something that people might not be used to. It’s a little bit sleeker,” Larson said.

This also partly explains why these cybercriminal tools are growing so quickly. Larson said Proofpoint observed an explosion in device-code phishing activity starting in February. 

By April, Kali365 was up and running and primarily distributed on Telegram, according to the FBI. “Kali365 lowers the barrier of entry, providing less-technical attackers access to AI-generated phishing lures, automated campaign templates, real-time targeted individual/entity tracking dashboards, and OAuth token capture capabilities,” the agency said in the public warning. 

Researchers at Arctic Wolf Labs, which has also been tracking large-scale campaigns linked to Kali365, said the platform charges affiliates $250 for 30 days of service or $2,000 for a full year.

Kali365 stores the OAuth access and refresh tokens it captures, and makes those available to affiliates on its platform. Those tokens can also be shared and reused by other cybercriminals who didn’t participate in the initial phishing lure, Arctic Wolf researchers added. 

The FBI also noted that these Microsoft 365 tokens provide persistent access, allowing attackers to wade through multiple Microsoft services without a password or additional MFA requests. 

“Identity can be very, very powerful once you’re in an organization,” Larson said, adding that attackers can abuse that access to impersonate people, access and steal data for extortion, commit fraud and deploy malware.

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Foxconn, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of electronics sold by major tech vendors, is recovering from a cyberattack that disrupted some of the company’s factories in North America.

Nitrogen, a ransomware group that’s known for targeting organizations in the manufacturing, construction and technology sectors, claimed responsibility for the attack on its data leak site and said it stole 8 terabytes of data spanning more than 11 million files. 

The threat group posted screenshots of some of the allegedly stolen data and claimed it compromised “confidential instructions, projects and drawings from Intel, Apple, Google, Dell, Nvidia and many other projects.” 

Foxconn is famously known as the primary assembler of Apple iPhones. Apple and the other companies allegedly impacted by the attack did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for Foxconn confirmed some of its factories in North America suffered a cyberattack, and said its cybersecurity team immediately responded to the breach by implementing additional “measures to ensure the continuity of production and delivery.”

The spokesperson did not answer questions about when the attack occurred or what systems or data was impacted, but noted that “affected factories are currently resuming normal production” as of Tuesday. 

Nitrogen was first observed in 2023, using ALPHV, one of the most prevalent ransomware variants at that time, Cynthia Kaiser, senior vice president at Halcyon’s Ransomware Research Center, told CyberScoop. The group started using stolen code from Conti, another formerly prolific ransomware variant, in 2024 to build its own custom attack tools to hit Windows and VMware server environments, she added.

The threat group has most recently focused on companies in the manufacturing and technology sectors. “However, the most recent cases of claims by Nitrogen do not include a working file listing on the leak site and include mostly older images of files,” Kaiser said. “This raises questions about whether Nitrogen is inflating data-theft claims in an attempt to pressure victims into paying higher ransoms.”

Foxconn hasn’t described the nature of the attack or confirmed the existence of a ransom demand. 

Ismael Valenzuela, vice president of threat research and intelligence at Arctic Wolf Labs, said Nitrogen follows a “consistent playbook, stealing data before encrypting systems so they have leverage on multiple fronts, combining operational disruption with the threat of sensitive information being exposed.”

The threat group’s tactics indicate it’s not opportunistic, but rather “operating with a defined model, focusing on organizations that are easier to access but still critical enough to drive pressure and payment,” Valenzuela added. 

Foxconn, also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry with headquarters in Taiwan, is among the world’s largest companies with $259 billion in revenue last year, the company said. Foxconn’s North American footprint includes multiple factories in Mexico, Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas, Virginia and Indiana.

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