Google said it has disabled offending accounts involved in a widespread spree of phishing emails today impersonating Attack.Phishing Google Docs . The emails , at the outset , targeted journalists primarily and attempted to trick Attack.Phishing victims into granting the malicious application permission to access the user ’ s Google account . It ’ s unknown how many accounts were compromised Attack.Databreach , or whether other applications are also involved . Google advises caution in clicking on links in emails sharing Google Docs . The messages purport to be from Attack.Phishing a contact , including contacts known to the victim , wanting to share a Google Doc file . Once the “ Open in Docs ” button is clicked , the victim is redirected to Google ’ s OAUTH2 service and the user is prompted to allow the attacker ’ s malicious application , called “ Google Docs , ” below , to access their Google account and related services , including contacts , Gmail , Docs and more . “ We have taken action to protect users against an email impersonating Attack.Phishing Google Docs , and have disabled offending accounts , ” a Google spokesperson told Threatpost . “ We ’ ve removed the fake pages , pushed Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability updates through Safe Browsing , and our abuse team is working to prevent this kind of spoofing Attack.Phishing from happening again . We encourage users to report phishing emails in Gmail. ” OAUTH is an authentication standard that allows a user to authorize third party applications access to an account . The attempt to steal OAUTH tokens is a departure from traditional phishing attacks Attack.Phishing that target passwords primarily . Once the attacker has access Attack.Databreach to the victim ’ s account , the phishing message is sent Attack.Phishing along to the compromised contact list . While this attack is likely the work of a spammer , nation-state attackers including APT28 , aka Fancy Bear or Sofacy , have made use of this tactic . APT28 has been linked to last summer’s attacks Attack.Phishing attempting to influence the U.S. presidential elections . The group has long been targeting political entities , including NATO , and uses phishing emails , backdoors and data-stealing malware to conduct espionage campaigns against its targets . “ I don ’ t believe they are behind this though because this is way too widespread , ” said Jaime Blasco , chief scientist at AlienVault . “ Many people and organizations have received similar attempts , so this is probably something massive and less targeted . ”