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VIPRE Security Group
AI Detection Chat-GPT Cloud Services cloud storage services generative AI tools hacker tactics malspam malware delivery Phishing emails phishing threats Spam Technology VIPRE Security Group

Rising Email Security Threats: Here’s All You Need to Know

 

A recent study highlights the heightened threat posed by spam and phishing emails due to the proliferation of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as Chat-GPT and the growing popularity of cloud services.

According to a fresh report from VIPRE Security Group, the surge in cloud usage has correlated with an uptick in hacker activity. In this quarter, 58% of malicious emails were found to be delivering malware through links, while the remaining 42% relied on attachments.

Furthermore, cloud storage services have emerged as a prominent method for delivering malicious spam (malspam), accounting for 67% of such delivery in the quarter, as per VIPRE's findings. The remaining 33% utilized legitimate yet manipulated websites.

The integration of generative AI tools has made it significantly harder to detect spam and phishing emails. Traditionally, grammatical errors, misspellings, or unusual formatting were red flags that tipped off potential victims to the phishing attempt, enabling them to avoid downloading attachments or clicking on links.

However, with the advent of AI tools like Chat-GPT, hackers are now able to craft well-structured, linguistically sophisticated messages that are virtually indistinguishable from benign correspondence. This necessitates victims to adopt additional precautions to thwart the threat.

In the third quarter of this year alone, VIPRE's tools identified a staggering 233.9 million malicious emails. Among these, 110 million contained malicious content, while 118 million carried malicious attachments. Moreover, 150,000 emails displayed "previously unknown behaviors," indicating that hackers are continually innovating their strategies to optimize performance.

Phishing and spam persist as favored attack methods in the arsenal of every hacker. They are cost-effective to produce and deploy, and with a stroke of luck, can reach a wide audience of potential victims. Companies are advised to educate their staff about the risks associated with phishing and to meticulously scrutinize every incoming email, regardless of the sender's apparent legitimacy.
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Snake Keylogger
malspam malware Phishing Campaign Snake Keylogger

Snake Keylogger is Back, Targets IT Corporates


Snake Keylogger tracks keystrokes 

Snake Keylogger is back again with a brand new malspam campaign distributing through phishing mails sent to corporate firms' managers. Bitdefender Antispam Labs found the campaign on 23 August 2022. 

A Keylogger is a kind of malicious software that keeps record of your keystrokes and forwards it to hackers. 

Keyloggers can be deployed in your system without you knowing, generally through a malicious infected website or email attachment. 

In few cases, the hackers may use a physical Keylogger on your computer that maybe like a malicious USB drive or customised phone charging cable. 

Campaign Details

As per the Bitdefender experts, the IP addresses used in the attack came from Vietnam, while the campaigns main targets were in USA, and over 1000 inboxes have received the phishing emails. 

Threat actors leverage the corporate profile of Qatar's one of the leading IT and cloud services providers to lure victims into clicking a ZIP archive. The archive includes an executable file named “CPMPANY PROFILE.exe.”

As per Bitdefender blogpost, the file installs the malicious Snake Keylogger payload on the victim system's host. The data is extracted through SMTP. 

About Snake Keylogger

It is an infamous info and credential stealing malware that steals sensitive information from victim's device. It has keyboard logging and screenshot capturing capabilities. It is a major threat to organizations due to its surveillance and data stealing capabilities.

Besides this, it can steal info from system keyboards. It is also known as 404 Keylogger. The malware came out in 2020 and can be found at underground forums/message boards for hundred dollars. The malware is generally used in campaigns driven by financial aims, these include fraud based campaigns and identity thefts. 

How to stay safe?

A Keylogger tracks every keystroke a user makes, allowing hackers to get your passwords, personal information, and financial data. However, you can follow some steps to stay safe. 

According to Bitdefender:

Always verify the origin and validity of correspondence before interacting with links or attachments, and deploy security solutions. Ensure that accounts are protected via two-factor (2FA) or multi-factor (MFA) authentication processes that will prevent cybercriminals from logging into accounts should your system get compromised, and install a security solution on their devices.





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Spam
Banking Trojan Cyber Attacks Cyberattacks DHL Express DLL load hijacking Emotet Kaspersky malspam Outlook PayPal PowerShell Spam

Emotet : The Infamous Botnet Has Returned

 

Kaspersky researchers were able to retrieve and analyze 10 out of 16 modules, with most having been used by Emotet in the past in one form or another. Kaspersky Lab was created in 1997 as multinational cybersecurity and digital privacy organization. Kaspersky's deep risk intelligence and security expertise are continually evolving into new security solutions and services to safeguard enterprises, vital infrastructure, governments, and consumers all around the world. 

Emotet was discovered in the wild for the first time in 2014. Its major purpose back then was to steal user's financial credentials. Since then, it has gone through several modifications, began transmitting other viruses, and eventually evolved into a strong botnet. Emotet is a type of malware classified as banking Trojans. Malspam, or spam emails with malware, is the most common way for it to propagate. To persuade users, these communications frequently contain familiar branding, imitating the email structure of well-known and trustworthy companies such as PayPal or DHL. 

As per Kaspersky telemetry, the number of victims increased from 2,843 in February 2022 to 9,086 in March 2022, indicating the attackers targeted more than three times the number of users. As a result, the number of threats detected by Kaspersky solutions has increased, from 16,897 in February 2022 to 48,597 in March 2022. 

A typical Emotet infection starts with spam e-mails containing malicious macros in Microsoft Office attachments. The actor can use this macro to launch a malicious PowerShell command which will drop and start a module loader, which will then talk with a command and control server to download and start modules. In the percent Windows percent SysWOW64 or percent User percent AppDataLocal directory, Emotet creates a subfolder with a random name and replicates itself under a completely random name and extension. The exported Control RunDLL method is used to launch the Emotet DLL's primary activity. These modules can be used to carry out a range of actions on the infected computer. Kaspersky researchers were able to extract and evaluate 10 of the 16 modules, the majority of which had previously been utilized by Emotet. 

Researchers now state that the Emotet can download 16 modules judging by the recent Emotet protocol and C2 answers. They were able to recover ten of them (including two separate copies of the Spam module), which were utilized by Emotet to steal credentials, passwords, accounts, and e-mail addresses, as well as spam. We present a brief examination of these modules and also statistics on current Emotet attacks in this post. 

To gather the account details of various email clients, the current version of Emotet can create automated spam campaigns which are further spread down the network from infected devices, retrieving emails and email addresses from Thunderbird and Outlook apps and accumulating passwords from popular web browsers like Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera. 

Emotet infects computers in businesses and homes all around the world. As per our telemetry, Emotet most frequently targeted users from the following countries in Q1 2022: Italy (10.04%), Russia (9.87%), Japan (8.55%), Mexico (8.36%), Brazil (6.88%), Indonesia (4.92%), India (3.21%), Vietnam (2.70%), China (2.62), Germany (2.19%) and Malaysia (2.13%). 

The present set of components is capable of a wide range of malicious activities, including stealing e-mails, passwords, and login data from a variety of sources, as well as spamming. Except for the Thunderbird components, Emotet has utilized all of these modules in some form or another before. However, there are still a few modules that we haven't been able to get our hands-on.
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RedLine Stealer
Info Stealer malspam malware Meta RedLine Stealer

Malspam Campaign Spreads Novel META Info-stealer

 

The new META malware, a unique info-stealer malware that appears to be gaining popularity among hackers, has been discovered in a malspam campaign. 

META, along with Mars Stealer and BlackGuard, is one of the latest info-stealers whose administrators aim to profit from Raccoon Stealer's absence from the market, which has left many looking for a new platform.  META was initially reported on the Bleeping Computer last month when KELA experts cautioned of its quick entry into the TwoEasy botnet marketplace. The product is advertised as an upgraded version of RedLine and costs $125 per month for monthly users or $1,000 for unlimited lifetime use. 

META is currently being utilised in attacks, according to security researcher and ISC Handler Brad Duncan. It is being used to steal passwords stored in Chrome, Edge, and Firefox, as well as cryptocurrency wallets. The infection chain in this campaign uses the "standard" approach of sending a macro-laced Excel spreadsheet as an email attachment to potential victims' inboxes. The communications make fictitious financial transfer promises that aren't very persuasive or well-crafted, yet they can nonetheless be effective against a considerable percentage of recipients. 

A DocuSign bait is included in the spreadsheet files, urging the target to "allow content" in order to launch the malicious VBS macro in the background. The malicious script will download a variety of payloads, including DLLs and executables, when it runs. To avoid detection by the security software, some of the downloaded files are base64 encoded or have their bytes reversed. 

One of the samples Duncan collected, for example, has its bytes reversed in the original file. The full payload is eventually assembled on the machine under the name "qwveqwveqw.exe," which is most likely random, and a new registry entry for persistence is created. The EXE file generating activity to a command and control server at 193.106.191[.]162, even after the system reboots, is clear and persistent evidence of the infection, restarting the infection process on the affected machine. 

One thing to keep in mind is that META uses PowerShell to tell Windows Defender to exclude .exe files in order to protect its files from discovery.
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Vulnerabilities
Cyber Fraud Email Hijacking Exploits Fraudsters malspam Microsoft Exchange Server Spam spammers Vulnerabilities

SquirrelWaffle Adds a Spin of Fraud to Exchange Server Malspamming

 

Squirrelwaffle, ProxyLogon, and ProxyShell are being utilized against Microsoft Exchange Servers to conduct financial fraud via email hijacking. Sophos researchers revealed that a Microsoft Exchange Server that had not been fixed to safeguard it against a set of serious vulnerabilities identified last year was used to hijack email threads and disseminate malspam. 

On March 2, 2021, Microsoft released emergency updates to address zero-day vulnerabilities that could be exploited to take over servers. At the time, Hafnium, an advanced persistent threat (APT) group, was constantly exploiting the bugs, and other APTs swiftly followed suit. Despite the fact that the ProxyLogon/ProxyShell flaws are now widely known, some servers remain unpatched and vulnerable to assaults. 

Sophos has described an instance that combined Microsoft Exchange Server vulnerabilities with Squirrelwaffle, a malware loader that was first discovered in malicious spam operations last year. Malicious Microsoft Office documents or DocuSign content tacked on to phishing emails are frequently used to spread the loader. Squirrelwaffle is frequently used to fetch and execute CobaltStrike beacons via a VBS script if an intended victim has permitted macros in the compromised documents. 

According to Sophos, the loader was used in the recent campaign once the Microsoft Exchange Server had been compromised. By hijacking existing email threads between employees, the server of an undisclosed organisation was utilised to "mass distribute" Squirrelwaffle to internal and external email addresses. 

Email Hijacking can take a variety of forms. Social engineering and impersonation, such as an attacker posing as an executive to dupe accounting departments into signing off on a fraudulent transaction, or sending email blasts with links to malware payloads, can disrupt communication channels. The spam campaign was utilized to disseminate Squirrelwaffle in this example, but attackers also extracted an email thread and used the internal knowledge contained within to execute financial fraud. Customer information was obtained, and a victim organization was chosen. The attackers generated email accounts using a domain to reply to the email thread outside of the server, using a technique known as typo-squatting to register a domain with a name that was very similar to the victim. 

Sophos explained, "To add further legitimacy to the conversation, the attackers copied additional email addresses to give the impression that they were requesting support from an internal department. In fact, the additional addresses were also created by the attacker under the typo-squatted domain." 

The attackers attempted for six days to divert a legitimate financial transaction to a bank account they owned. The money was about to be processed, and the victim escaped the attack only because a bank involved in the transaction realized the transfer was most likely fake. 

Matthew Everts, Sophos researcher commented, "This is a good reminder that patching alone isn't always enough for protection. In the case of vulnerable Exchange servers, for example, you also need to check the attackers haven't left behind a web shell to maintain access. And when it comes to sophisticated social engineering attacks such as those used in email thread hijacking, educating employees about what to look out for and how to report it is critical for detection."
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Ransomware
Botnet Botnets Encrypted Files malspam malware Ransomware

Emotet Botnet Operators Switching to a New Template Named ‘Red Dawn’


Emotet malware has been continually evolving to the levels of technically sophisticated malware that has a major role in the expansion of the cybercrime ecosystem. First discovered as a simple banking Trojan, Emotet’s roots date back to 2014 when it attempted to steal banking credentials from affected machines.

However, after going through multiple upgrades, since then, it has taken upon various roles- to exemplify, it has leveled up its threat game long ago to become a “loader”; it gathers data and sends it via an encrypted channel to its command and control (C2) servers, it also downloads modules to further the functionality.

The threat actors, actively involved in the rapid expansion of “Emotet” as a service, have devised a new method of attacking their targets by making them access infected documents. Until a while ago, the operators of Emotet have been using an iOS-themed document template in their botnet campaigns, the template informed victims that the document was created on iOS and that in order to view the content properly, he needs to ‘Enable Content’.

However, this is not the scenario anymore. In its newer campaigns, the notorious botnet is reported to be employing a new template, named ‘Red Dawn’ by Emotet expert, Joseph Roosen, for its red accent colors.

While displaying the message, “This document is protected”, the Red Dawn template informs the user that the preview is unavailable and in order to view the document, he is required to click on ‘Enable Content’ or ‘Enable Editing’ button.

After the user is being tricked into accessing the document via the steps he was asked to follow, Emotet malware gets installed on his system following the execution of macros. Once the system is successfully infected, Emotet malware may proceed to deliver other malware and ransomware namely Trickbot and Qbot or Conti and ProLock respectively.

“#Emotet AAR for 2020/09/02: Only a couple malspams at dayjob. It looks like JP is getting targeted heavily now by E1/E2 and E3. Seeing templates on all 3! The new regex for E1 is stupid and I bet Yuri thought that was epic, well nope, even easier to block, new regex in report. TT”, Joseph Roosen said in his related Tweet.
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ransomware attacks
buran Cyber Attacks email spam German malspam ransomware attacks

Malspam Campaign attacks German organizations with Buran ransomware


As of Oct 2019 researchers have discovered malicious spam (malspam) campaign targeting German organizations that delivered Buran crypto-ransomware family. The emails are crafted so as to appear to be coming from online fax service eFax.

Public reporting indicates that Buran malspam campaigns began on 13 September 2019, corroborated by metadata found in emails and Microsoft Word documents. Then the campaign on 1 October 2019 copied the eFax brand, an online fax service. German organizations were targeted using an email that seemed like it was from eFax and Word document in German.

 Technical Details 

On opening the mail, the user is given a hyperlink, which if clicked directs the user to a PHP page that contains the malicious word document. The document then contains a Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macro, when enabled, downloads the malicious executable.

On Activation, the Buran ransomware performs the following tasks- (Sc.Itssecure.com)

•Sends an HTTP GET request to hxxp://geoiptool[.]com, in order to determine the location of the victim machine.
•Copies itself to another directory & renames itself to “Isass.exe”, in order to evade being detected by security solutions in place.
•It then utilizes a command shell to establish persistence.
•Further, it modifies the windows registry’s run key, so that “Isass.exe” is executed every time someone logs into the machine.
•It then disables services like windows event log and windows error recovery & automatic repair.
•Finally, it deletes any backups made by Volume shadow copy service (VSS).
•Upon completion of the encryption process, a ransom note is displayed, containing the instructions that need to be followed by the victim, in order to decrypt his files.

These type of malicious spam ransomware campaigns leads to lag in business-critical operations, loss of sensitive and confidential data and financial loss to the organization. Such ransomware keeps surfacing often and can lead to degeneration of an organization and hence organizations should take active measures and protect themselves from such malevolent attacks. The organizations should create strong cybersecurity with updated systems and software and invest in employee training programs, to aware them about malspams, phishing, and other threats.
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