What Happened
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) phishing toolkit called NovaCookies that's used as a proxy to redirect Microsoft 365 sign-ins, while capturing authenticated sessions in the process. In a report shared with The Hacker News ahead of publication, Island characterized the $320/month service as a subscription-based phishing platform that
Why It Matters
The report describes NovaCookies as a subscription-based adversary-in-the-middle phishing toolkit that abuses genuine Docusign notifications to proxy Microsoft 365 sign-ins and capture authenticated sessions. The article frames this as a cybercrime service rather than an AI system, so the AI connection is indirect and not supported by the text provided. RealGround analysis: this is relevant as a credential-theft and session-hijacking threat that can impact SaaS identity security, warranting phishing-resistant authentication controls, session protection, and ongoing red-team testing.
RealGround Analysis
This signal maps to malicious AI use. Organizations using AI agents, LLM APIs, SaaS integrations, or sensitive data workflows should review whether this class of issue could create unauthorized tool execution, data leakage, weak approval gates, or unmanaged supply-chain exposure.
Recommended Actions
- Restrict AI agent tool permissions and production write paths.
- Review sensitive data access across prompts, logs, embeddings, memory, and SaaS integrations.
- Add human approval workflows for high-impact or state-changing actions.
- Run prompt injection and indirect prompt injection tests against affected workflows.
- Document the owner, control gap, and remediation deadline for this risk class.
Source
https://thehackernews.com/2026/08/novacookies-campaigns-abuse-genuine.html
