A joint advisory from the FBI, CISA, NSA and international partners says actors enabled by China-based Integrity Technology Group stole email from organizations in Southeast Asia and maintained a web application that let third parties view stolen messages. The advisory does not identify those users or say how many organizations’ email was taken.
What did the FBI say the portal let third parties do?
The October 8, 2026 joint advisory says the actors maintained a custom web application through which third parties could access stolen email content. Users could supply specific URL arguments to view email associated with particular accounts. The advisory does not describe how the users were connected to the actors, how many people used the application, or the extent of their access.
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This is a description of access to already collected email—not evidence that the portal itself broke into victim accounts. The advisory treats intrusion and collection as separate parts of the activity.
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Who was affected, and what remains unknown?
Investigators observed email-data theft from government organizations, law-enforcement agencies, healthcare systems and religious institutions in Southeast Asia. The advisory also describes broader targeting of organizations in Southeast Asia, Africa and North America, as well as U.S. critical infrastructure sectors. Those wider targeting descriptions should not be read as confirmation that email was stolen from every targeted organization or sector.
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The official advisory does not provide a total number of organizations whose email was stolen or dates for individual thefts. It says the actors had access to victim networks and cloud services since at least mid-January 2021; that is a timeframe for access, not a date when each email theft began.
How did the activity connect to Integrity Technology Group?
The advisory describes Integrity Technology Group, or Integrity Tech, as a China-based for-profit company with links to the Chinese government. It says the company enabled malicious activity by acquiring or building cyber tools for use and sale, acquiring and hosting infrastructure, and compromising networks. The agencies say their findings draw on technical evidence recovered from and observed during multiple FBI investigations related to Integrity Tech.
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Public reporting has used labels including Flax Typhoon, Ethereal Panda and Red Juliett for activity with consistent tactics. The advisory cautions that private-sector names and U.S. government tracking labels do not necessarily map one-to-one. The labels should not be treated as interchangeable identities, and not every activity by the actors is necessarily associated with Integrity Tech.
How did the actors obtain and collect email?
The advisory describes several collection routes, rather than one method tied to every victim:
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- Exchange Web Services (EWS): Scripts interfaced with Microsoft Exchange Web Services to collect data. Depending on the account and configuration, EWS can expose email as well as calendars and contacts.
- Outlook 365 accounts: A command-line utility targeted Microsoft Outlook 365 accounts during different periods.
- Manual collection and database downloads: The actors also pulled email manually and downloaded databases.
Collected material included credentials and email data. Elsewhere, the advisory describes vulnerability scanning, credential harvesting and password spraying, and persistence through VPN software. These are parts of the broader intrusion activity; the advisory does not establish that each technique was used against every organization whose email was stolen.
What did DOJ seize on October 8?
In a separate same-day announcement, the U.S. Department of Justice said it had obtained court authorization to seize infrastructure associated with Microscan and FishHub, which it described as tools used in Integrity Tech-linked activity. DOJ characterized Microscan as a reconnaissance tool and FishHub as facilitating spear-phishing exploitation and subsequent malware delivery. It reported approximately 20 confirmed FishHub victims among Taiwanese universities.
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That announcement is related operational context, not a description of the email portal: DOJ’s release does not identify the third-party email application as one of the seized tools. The advisory separately reports that MicroScan, a Python-based web application used to scan for specific vulnerabilities, included more than 1,300 penetration-testing scripts. That figure describes the tool, not a victim or account count. The FBI and its partners also list eight observed vulnerabilities in the advisory’s Appendix B; they do not say all eight were exploited against every victim.
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What should organizations do?
The agencies recommend practical steps to reduce exposure and investigate possible compromise. Their joint advisory includes indicators of compromise and incident-response guidance for defenders.
- Hunt for compromise: Review relevant systems, accounts and network activity against the advisory’s indicators and incident-response guidance. Investigate suspicious access to cloud services, email systems and VPN software.
- Patch affected systems: Prioritize the systems and vulnerabilities addressed in the advisory. The eight vulnerabilities listed in Appendix B are observed vulnerabilities, not proof that every one applies to every organization.
- Reduce exposed services: Disable services and ports that are not needed, and review externally reachable systems for unnecessary exposure.
- Strengthen identity and access controls: Apply identity, credential and access-management policies, and require multifactor authentication where possible. A hardware security key can be one implementation, but organizations should confirm compatibility with their identity provider and follow internal policy.
- Validate web application input: Sanitize inputs to help prevent cross-site scripting and review applications for unsafe handling of user-supplied values.
Organizations that find evidence of unauthorized access should use their incident-response procedures and the official advisory’s guidance rather than relying on a single indicator or assuming the email portal was the initial entry point.
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