One recent morning, Nick Johnson did what many of us do: scanned his inbox, eyes glazed, sifting spam from signal. Then he spotted what looked like a run-of-the-mill Google security alert—legit sender address, DKIM check passed, sorted neatly with his real security alerts. The message: Google, apparently, had been served with a subpoena and required a copy of his Google account contents. Now, you might think you’d spot a scam from a mile away—the awkward English, the “AppleSupport89@gmail.com” sender, a sketchy link crammed into the body. But this email seemed to have checked all the boxes, ducked under Gmail’s guard rails, and parked itself right where real security warnings live.
Let’s unpack what happened and why this particular phishing attack has left even Gmail's formidable defenses sheepishly playing catch-up.
Phishing, the digital art of conning people into giving up their credentials, is as old as email itself. Most attacks bank on volume: cast the net wide, hope a clueless or distracted user bites. Historically, these emails are riddled with bad grammar, suspicious links, odd requests (“Dear Esteemed Beneficiary, please send $100 in iTunes gift cards…”), and come from addresses that fall apart under cursory inspection.
In response, Gmail and other major providers have bolted on layers of security—spam filters, sender authentication, machine learning-based spam prediction, and visual cues for suspicious content. For years, those basic attempts worked well enough so long as users maintained a modicum of skepticism.
But in this new era, hackers are going for subtlety and subterfuge. Now, it’s not about the volume of bait—it’s about crafting the perfect lure.
Click the accompanying link, and you’re directed to a site that—on the surface—is a genuine slice of Google’s own sprawling web:
How did hackers manage to pull off this email inception?
Attackers exploit this by designing a near-perfect clone of Google's sign-in portal or whatever themed scam they desire. You look at the address bar, you see “google.com”—‘nuff said, right? But you’re on
Security experts continually urge users to “check the sender,” “look for misspellings,” and “hover over links.” This attack sidesteps all of those defenses:
Software developer Nick Johnson, who publicized this stunt in a detailed X (formerly Twitter) thread, speculated on its mechanics even as he carefully sidestepped getting phished himself. He didn’t log into the phony portal—opting instead for a thread to warn the world.
Johnson theorized—instructively, not invitationally—that anyone with modest programming chops could replicate this attack. The steps were almost “script kiddie” simple:
Given how much Google is trusted to be a digital gatekeeper, the cognitive dissonance required to disbelieve one of its own security alerts is immense. There’s security fatigue: we’re conditioned to trust certain digital signposts, and this attack is hitchhiking in the Google-branded HOV lane.
In other words, from Google’s perspective, the system did just what they built it to do. There’s no technical vulnerability—just a clever leveraging of established features. The OAuth alert system, Sites product, domain authentication—none of these are hacked or breached in the traditional sense. They’re just… being used in ways the architects likely didn’t foresee.
For users and infosec nerds alike, this answer was as comforting as a smoke alarm that shrugs and tells you, “That’s just what houses do sometimes.”
Days later, Johnson posted that Google had reconsidered. They confirmed to news outlets that the OAuth loophole was under active remediation, and that new safeguards would soon be rolled out to prevent further abuse.
Google didn’t just admit the attack was clever—they identified the threat actor group known as “Rockfoils,” notorious for advanced phishing. The company committed to deploying fixes to stymie this exact type of abuse, and in the interim, recommended the use of two-factor authentication and passkeys as a bulwark against similar social engineering.
Think of it this way: Google lets millions of developers, teachers, businesses, and individuals create projects with ease, and their tools are designed for rapid, barrier-free deployment. When features designed for user empowerment are twisted by criminals, it often takes high-profile stunts like this to snap policy into focus.
If you’re reading this on a phone, you’re already working at a disadvantage. Links are harder to inspect, sender details are hidden behind nested menus, and touchscreens don’t allow for the kind of “hover to reveal link” safety checks PCs do by default.
Most chilling is how this attack exploits not just technical trust, but emotional trust. Security alerts stoke anxiety: “Your account is at risk! Click here immediately!” In the rush to resolve potential threats, people click first and contemplate later. If the warning looks more “official” than usual, all the better for the attacker.
But the broader question remains: at what point does institutional trust (infrastructure, email, OAuth, browser security) need to be supplemented by individual skepticism? And is it fair to expect users to spot a forgery crafted using all the right inks, logos, and stamps—printed, quite literally, by Google itself?
The answer, for now, is about layering our defenses: keep your accounts locked down with multi-factor authentication, stay skeptical even of “Google itself,” and advocate for cloud service providers to examine not just technical bugs, but abuse of legitimate workflows.
Tech giants must patch procedures, not just code; and users must ask hard questions about what trust really looks like on the modern internet.
For now, beware the Google email bearing gifts. If your inbox claims you must act immediately, don’t just check the sender—check yourself. In the digital arms race, a little skepticism goes a long way. And remember, the real Google will never mind if you “take a moment to verify.”
Source: Laptop Mag A new kind of phishing attack is fooling Gmail’s security. Here’s how it works
Let’s unpack what happened and why this particular phishing attack has left even Gmail's formidable defenses sheepishly playing catch-up.
The Old Phishing Playbook: Loud, Obvious, and Often Laughed Off
Phishing, the digital art of conning people into giving up their credentials, is as old as email itself. Most attacks bank on volume: cast the net wide, hope a clueless or distracted user bites. Historically, these emails are riddled with bad grammar, suspicious links, odd requests (“Dear Esteemed Beneficiary, please send $100 in iTunes gift cards…”), and come from addresses that fall apart under cursory inspection.In response, Gmail and other major providers have bolted on layers of security—spam filters, sender authentication, machine learning-based spam prediction, and visual cues for suspicious content. For years, those basic attempts worked well enough so long as users maintained a modicum of skepticism.
But in this new era, hackers are going for subtlety and subterfuge. Now, it’s not about the volume of bait—it’s about crafting the perfect lure.
A Masterclass in Deception: When Google’s Own Tools Become Weapons
Here’s where the plot thickens. Nick Johnson, a software developer, received an email from what appeared to be a bona fide Google address:[email]no-reply@google.com[/email]. Any reasonable person could check the technical headers and see it passed a DKIM check—a technology ensuring the email is actually from where it claims. Google’s own email clients sorted it alongside other actual security alerts.Click the accompanying link, and you’re directed to a site that—on the surface—is a genuine slice of Google’s own sprawling web:
sites.google.com. However, the subtle divergence is that instead of logging in through the familiar and secure accounts.google.com, you’re viewing a Google Site made by, well, anyone.How did hackers manage to pull off this email inception?
Building the Trojan Horse with Google Sites
Google Sites is a relic from a looser era in internet history, back when security wasn’t the well-oiled juggernaut of today. The platform allows anyone with a Google account to spin up a page, complete with embedded content, scripts, and, crucially, the authority that comes with sitting on a legitimategoogle.com subdomain.Attackers exploit this by designing a near-perfect clone of Google's sign-in portal or whatever themed scam they desire. You look at the address bar, you see “google.com”—‘nuff said, right? But you’re on
sites.google.com/view/fakeportal, not accounts.google.com.Engineering a Deceptive Email, the Google Way
But the real innovation in this phishing gambit is how attackers get emails into user inboxes that are verified as legit at every technical checkpoint. Here’s how they do it:- Register a Controlled Domain: The attacker creates a new domain—let’s call it
shadycorp.com. - Make a Google Account with It: Set up a Google account as
[email]phisher@shadycorp.com[/email]. - Spin Up a Custom OAuth Application: Naming their app “Google Legal Support,” “Security Alert,” or any other official-sounding title, they can replicate the exact language and visuals of a typical Google alert.
- Trigger an Authenticated Security Alert: Now, here’s the twist. By granting OAuth permissions to their own account, Google’s automated systems send a security alert email to the account owner—an email that comes directly from Google, passes all authentication checks (SPF, DKIM), and appears visually indistinguishable from actual warnings.
- Forward This Email to the Victim: With the core of the ruse built, they forward the alert to their intended victim. The email came from Google, contains the correct trigger wording, comes with the correct sender address, and links to a “site” absolutely hosted on
google.com, albeit not the correct Google authenticator portal.
Why Does This Work?
This phishing strategy is genius (in the dark, criminal sense of the word) because it uses Google’s own infrastructure and business logic against itself. The fake OAuth alert isn’t fabricated in Photoshop and injected into the message body—it’s a real message generated by Google, for Google, and delivered to a user by the same Google systems that handle millions of legitimate alerts daily.Security experts continually urge users to “check the sender,” “look for misspellings,” and “hover over links.” This attack sidesteps all of those defenses:
- The sender is valid.
- Authentication checks are passed.
- Email infrastructure routes it with legitimate Google warnings.
- The linked domain is googly as it gets.
sites.google.com instead of accounts.google.com, you may hesitate. But you’d be forgiven for assuming you’re still inside friendly territory.The Black Hats’ New Hosts: Google Oauth + Sites
To understand the full impact, imagine if Amazon or Apple let anyone generate system alerts to any recipient, using real product branding and official sender addresses. That’s what’s happening here: Google’s generous ecosystem, designed for collaboration and extensibility, is being bent into an attack vector not through technical vulnerability, but procedural loophole.Software developer Nick Johnson, who publicized this stunt in a detailed X (formerly Twitter) thread, speculated on its mechanics even as he carefully sidestepped getting phished himself. He didn’t log into the phony portal—opting instead for a thread to warn the world.
Johnson theorized—instructively, not invitationally—that anyone with modest programming chops could replicate this attack. The steps were almost “script kiddie” simple:
- Make a Google Site spoofing a security alert or portal.
- Register a domain, create a Google account with it, spin up an OAuth app with legit-sounding branding.
- Approve the app, trigger a security alert, and forward the (real, authenticated) email to your intended mark.
The Scariest Phish Yet: Why This Attack Is Almost Undetectable
The standard advice for avoiding phishing—“don’t click on links from unknown senders”—loses power here. After all, the sender is Google. Even seasoned IT staffers could be forgiven for falling for a message like this, especially as more work is accomplished on mobile devices where examining URLs is fiddly and oversight is easier.Given how much Google is trusted to be a digital gatekeeper, the cognitive dissonance required to disbelieve one of its own security alerts is immense. There’s security fatigue: we’re conditioned to trust certain digital signposts, and this attack is hitchhiking in the Google-branded HOV lane.
Google’s Initial Response: “Working as Intended,” a Phrase That Should Never Fill You With Confidence
Johnson dutifully reported the vulnerability to Google through official channels. The first reply from the company’s security team? Essentially: “Yes, we know. This is working as intended.”In other words, from Google’s perspective, the system did just what they built it to do. There’s no technical vulnerability—just a clever leveraging of established features. The OAuth alert system, Sites product, domain authentication—none of these are hacked or breached in the traditional sense. They’re just… being used in ways the architects likely didn’t foresee.
For users and infosec nerds alike, this answer was as comforting as a smoke alarm that shrugs and tells you, “That’s just what houses do sometimes.”
Crowd Outrage, Public Pressure, and Google's Reversal
The collective gasp from the cybersecurity community was loud and swift. Twitter threads caught fire. HackerNews, that digital agora of tech angst and ingenuity, bristled with critiques and cautionary tales. In the end, this open scrutiny accomplished what the initial vulnerability report failed to: motivate change.Days later, Johnson posted that Google had reconsidered. They confirmed to news outlets that the OAuth loophole was under active remediation, and that new safeguards would soon be rolled out to prevent further abuse.
Google didn’t just admit the attack was clever—they identified the threat actor group known as “Rockfoils,” notorious for advanced phishing. The company committed to deploying fixes to stymie this exact type of abuse, and in the interim, recommended the use of two-factor authentication and passkeys as a bulwark against similar social engineering.
What You Need to Know Now: The Anatomy of a Modern Phishing Attack
If you’re a Google Workspace admin, an IT manager, or just a private citizen with anything personal in a Google account, here’s what this episode teaches:- It’s Not Just About Look and Feel: Technical legitimacy (DKIM, SPF, etc.) isn’t a silver bullet. Attackers are using real infrastructure.
- OAuth Remains a Double-Edged Sword: The permissions and alerts system, intended to keep accounts safe, can be bent into a delivery mechanism for phishing.
- Legacy Products Are Weak Points: Google Sites, a product built for convenience, wasn’t designed to police arbitrage between trusted and untrusted content on a high-assurance domain.
- Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) and Passkeys Matter: They can stop attacks even when a user is tricked into following the wrong link. With 2FA or a passkey, attackers are usually stopped at the finish line, unable to provide the secondary proof required.
- Check URLs With Extreme Skepticism: The only real giveaway—the domain in the address bar—is subtle, but it’s there. Train yourself (and your colleagues) to notice.
The Broader Implications: How Safe Do We Want Convenience to Be?
The heart of this attack is the push and pull between security and usability. Google’s ecosystem is popular not in spite of its openness but because of it. The company has long championed API-first applications, extensibility, and bring-your-own-enterprise-logic workflows. But every new integration point opens a window where bad actors can wiggle through.Think of it this way: Google lets millions of developers, teachers, businesses, and individuals create projects with ease, and their tools are designed for rapid, barrier-free deployment. When features designed for user empowerment are twisted by criminals, it often takes high-profile stunts like this to snap policy into focus.
The Human Element: Scams Are Evolving, Are We Keeping Pace?
It’s tempting to see the phishing world as a storm that can be weathered with better tech. But in reality, every step forward in security—more checkboxes, better encryption, browser warnings—trains attackers to up their game.If you’re reading this on a phone, you’re already working at a disadvantage. Links are harder to inspect, sender details are hidden behind nested menus, and touchscreens don’t allow for the kind of “hover to reveal link” safety checks PCs do by default.
Most chilling is how this attack exploits not just technical trust, but emotional trust. Security alerts stoke anxiety: “Your account is at risk! Click here immediately!” In the rush to resolve potential threats, people click first and contemplate later. If the warning looks more “official” than usual, all the better for the attacker.
What’s Next for Gmail, and for Us?
Google's rolled out, or is rolling out, new protections. As with every game of security whack-a-mole, the fix for this OAuth posture will curveball attackers into finding (or inventing) new avenues.But the broader question remains: at what point does institutional trust (infrastructure, email, OAuth, browser security) need to be supplemented by individual skepticism? And is it fair to expect users to spot a forgery crafted using all the right inks, logos, and stamps—printed, quite literally, by Google itself?
The answer, for now, is about layering our defenses: keep your accounts locked down with multi-factor authentication, stay skeptical even of “Google itself,” and advocate for cloud service providers to examine not just technical bugs, but abuse of legitimate workflows.
Conclusion: Our Digital Future Needs Paranoia—But Not Despair
The hack of 2024 that made everyone rethink their “check the sender” habits is a masterclass in turning trust into a weapon. As Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and others race to evolve their platforms, attackers are always just a few paces behind, ready to turn “feature” into “attack vector.”Tech giants must patch procedures, not just code; and users must ask hard questions about what trust really looks like on the modern internet.
For now, beware the Google email bearing gifts. If your inbox claims you must act immediately, don’t just check the sender—check yourself. In the digital arms race, a little skepticism goes a long way. And remember, the real Google will never mind if you “take a moment to verify.”
Source: Laptop Mag A new kind of phishing attack is fooling Gmail’s security. Here’s how it works
