Attackers conceal phishing lures using invisible Unicode characters

ASCII smuggling crossed over from AI attacks to spam

For two years, invisible Unicode characters have been the neat trick of AI security research. You hide instructions inside them. A person sees nothing. A language model reads them and does as it is told. Microsoft has now found somebody using the same characters for something far less clever. They were splitting up the word […] This story continues at The Next Web

Attackers conceal phishing lures using invisible Unicode characters

Threat actors have adopted the ASCII smuggling technique in phishing campaigns, using invisible Unicode characters to evade email security filters.

An AI hacking trick is now being used to split the word ‘funding’ in spam | #hacking | #cybersecurity | #infosec | #comptia | #pentest | #hacker - National Cyber Security Consulting

For two years, invisible Unicode characters have been the neat trick of AI security research. You hide instructions inside them. A person sees nothing. A language model reads them and does as it is told. Microsoft has now found somebody using the same characters for something far less clever. They were splitting up the word […] Thank you for subscribing to our RSS feed!

Ars Technica: Once popular for attacking AI, ASCII smuggling is embraced by spammers

Ars Technica: Once popular for attacking AI, ASCII smuggling is embraced by spammers. “A clever technique used to hide malicious prompts in attacks on AI agents has been adopted by spammers to evade filters on email platforms that are designed to flag unwanted messages used in mass campaigns.”

Microsoft finds an AI jailbreak trick fueling a 2.37 million email phishing wave

Microsoft says a phishing operation adopted ASCII smuggling, a technique AI red-teamers invented to jailbreak chatbots, hiding invisible Unicode characters inside words like "funding" to dodge email filters. The campaign peaked at 2.37 million messages on February 26, 2026, and ties back to a broader operation targeting small businesses applying for SBA loans.