Chinese hackers have been impersonating US artificial intelligence experts, including a former government official, in an effort to steal emails and other credentials from AI specialists at think tanks, universities and other organisations, cybersecurity company Proofpoint said on Thursday.
In a report, Proofpoint said it had observed the hackers, whom it calls “TA419”, repeatedly attempting to steal passwords from people working for US and Japanese think tanks, defence contractors, universities and law firms since at least 2025.
Proofpoint attributed the campaign to a China-aligned group based on the malware used, the internet infrastructure involved and the targets selected, which it said were consistent with Chinese intelligence-collection priorities.
The company said the hackers’ latest campaign involved sending emails that purported to come from experts in AI or statecraft, including Lynne Parker, who previously served as principal deputy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
The emails typically proposed AI-related collaborations or initiatives before directing recipients to websites designed to steal their passwords, Proofpoint said.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Beijing has long denied conducting cyberespionage operations.
Proofpoint declined to identify the hackers’ targets, saying only that they included “experts working on AI regulation, export controls and national AI strategy”.
Reuters was independently able to identify one of the targets, Alex Engler, a former White House official who now heads the Penn Center on Media, Technology, and Democracy.
Engler told Reuters on Wednesday that he had received an email appearing to be from Parker inviting him “to join a new AI policy project”.
But the email “felt slightly, nebulously off”, he said. After checking with others in the field, he realised it was from an impostor.
Engler said he could not speculate about why he had been targeted. Proofpoint, however, said the targeting of fewer than 10 people across a handful of organisations suggested “an intelligence interest in US policymaking rather than technology theft alone”.
Parker told Reuters that Engler was one of two people she knew of who had received suspicious messages purporting to be from her in early July.
She said the allegation of Chinese involvement was plausible.
“The United States and China are in a competition around AI,” Parker said. “Trying to get people in the AI policy space to reveal information about their AI policy plans — if that indeed was what the objective was — it’s not surprising.”