Phishing & Email Spam

CrowdStrike Phishing and Malware Distribution Scams Mount Following Outage

by titanadmin | Jul 26, 2024 | Phishing & Email Spam |

CrowdStrike has confirmed that a significant proportion of Windows devices that were rendered inoperable following a faulty update last Friday have now been restored to full functionality; however, businesses are still facing disruption and many scams have been identified by cybercriminals looking to take advantage.

One of those scams involves a fake recovery manual that is being pushed in phishing emails. The emails claim to provide a Recovery Tool that fixes the out-of-bounds memory read triggered by the update that caused Windows devices to crash and display the blue screen of death. The phishing emails include a document attachment named “New_Recovery_Tool_to_help_with_CrowdStrike_issue_impacting_Windows. docm.” The document is a copy of a Microsoft support bulletin, which claims that a new Microsoft Recovery Tool has been developed that automates recovery by deleting the CrowdStrike driver that is causing the crash. The user is prompted to enable content; however, doing so will allow a macro to run, which will download a malicious DLL, which launches the Daolpu stealer – an information stealer that collects and exfiltrates credentials, login information, and cookies stored in Chrome and Firefox.

Another campaign has been identified that capitalizes on the defective Falcon Sensor update. The spear phishing campaign targeted German firms and attempts to distribute a fake CrowdStrike Crash Reporter installer via a website that spoofs a legitimate German company. The website was registered a day after the CrowdStrike disruptions started. If the user attempts to download the installer by clicking the download button in the email, a ZIP archive will be delivered that includes a malicious InnoSetup installer. If executed, the user is shown a fake CrowdStrike branded installer. The installer is password-protected to prevent analysis and the final payload could not be determined.

Another campaign attempts to distribute Lumma information-stealing malware. The campaign uses the domain, crowdstrike-office365[.]com, and tricks the recipient into downloading a fake recovery tool to deal with the boot loop that prevents Windows devices from booting up. If the downloaded file is executed, it delivers a malware loader, which will, in turn, deliver the Lumma infostealer.

These are just three campaigns that use the CrowdStrike outage to deliver malware, all of which use email as the way to make contact with individuals affected by the outage. Many other campaigns are being conducted and a large number of CrowdStrike-themed domains have been registered since the problems started. Other malicious domains used in campaigns include the following, all of which should be blocked.

crowdstrike-helpdesk.com

crowdstrike.black

crowdstrikefix.zip

crowdstrikebluescreen.com

crashstrike.com

fix-crowdstrike-bsod.com

crowdstrike-falcon.online

crowdstrike-bsod.com

crowdstrikedoomsday.com

crowdstrikedown.site

crowdstrikefix.com

isitcrowdstrike.com

crowdstriketoken.com

crowdstrike0day.com

crowdstrikeoutage.com

These scams are likely to continue for some time, so it is important to remind employees of the high risk of malicious emails and warn them to exercise extreme caution with any emails received. Employees should be told to report any suspicious emails to their security team.

TitanHQ offers a range of cybersecurity solutions to block phishing and malware distribution campaigns, all of which are quick and easy to implement and can protect you in a matter of minutes. They include the WebTitan web filter for blocking access to known malicious websites, such as those detailed in this email; the PhishTitan anti-phishing solution for Office 365, and the SpamTitan corporate email filter for blocking phishing emails. The latter incorporates email sandboxing for blocking novel and obfuscated malware threats. TitanHQ also provides a comprehensive security awareness training platform and phishing simulator for improving your human defenses by raising awareness of cyber threats and providing timely training content on the latest tactics used by cybercriminals in targeted attacks on employees.

Give the TitanHQ team a call today for further information on improving your defenses, or take advantage of the free trial available with all TitanHQ products to get immediate protection.

Surge in Fake Websites and Phishing Related to CrowdStrike Windows Outage

by titanadmin | Jul 22, 2024 | Phishing & Email Spam |

On July 19, 2024, Windows workstations and servers were disabled as a result of a bug in a software update for CrowdStrike Falcon Sensor. When the update was installed on Windows devices, it caused them to show the Blue Screen of Death or get stuck in a boot loop, rendering the devices unusable. Microsoft revealed that its telemetry showed 8.5 million Windows devices had been affected in around 78 minutes.

CrowdStrike Falcon platform is a cybersecurity solution that incorporates anti-virus protection, endpoint detection and response, threat intelligence, threat hunting, and security hygiene, and it is used by many large businesses around the world, including around half of Fortune 500 firms. The disruption caused by the update has been colossal. Airlines had to ground flights, airports were unable to check people in, healthcare providers were unable to access electronic patient records and had to cancel appointments and surgeries, financial institutions faced major disruption, and some media companies were unable to broadcast live television for hours. Even organizations that did not use the Falcon product were adversely affected if any of their vendors used the product. The incident has been called the worst-ever IT outage, with huge financial implications.

It did not take long for cybercriminals to take advantage of the chaos. Within hours, cybercriminals were registering fake websites impersonating CrowdStrike offering help fixing the problem, and domains were registered and used in phishing campaigns promising a rapid resolution of the problem. Given the huge financial impact of suddenly not having access to any Windows devices, there was a pressing need to get a rapid resolution but the fixes being touted by cybercriminals involved downloading fake updates and hotfixes that installed malware.

Those fake updates are being used to deliver a range of different malware types including malware loaders, remote access Trojans, data wipers, and information stealers, while the phishing campaigns direct users to websites where they are prompted to enter their credentials, which are captured and used to access accounts. Cybercriminals have been posing as tech specialists and independent researchers and have been using deepfake videos and voice calls to get users to unwittingly grant them access to their devices, disclose their passwords, or divulge other sensitive codes.

CrowdStrike has issued a fix and provided instructions for resolving the issue, but those instructions require each affected device to be manually fixed. The fix was rolled out rapidly, but CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said it will likely take some time for a full recovery for all affected users, creating a sizeable window of opportunity for threat actors. Due to the surge in criminal activity related to the outage, everyone should remain vigilant and verify the authenticity of any communications, including emails, text messages, and telephone calls, and only rely on trusted sources for guidance.  The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has reminded all organizations of the importance of having robust cybersecurity measures in place to protect their users, assets, and data, and to remind all employees to avoid opening suspicious emails or clicking on unverified links in emails.

It is important to have multiple layers of security protection to identify, detect, and avoid these attacks, including AI-driven phishing protection, web filtering to block access to malicious websites, anti-virus software to detect and neutralize malware, and security awareness training for employees. TitanHQ can help to secure your business in all of these areas and offers a cloud-based spam filtering service (SpamTitan) which includes email sandboxing and email antivirus filter, phishing protection for Office 365 (PhishTitan), and the SafeTitan security awareness training and phishing simulator.

Is Your Business Prepared for a Summer of Scams?

by titanadmin | Jul 1, 2024 | Phishing & Email Spam |

Phishing attacks and business email compromise scams are leading causes of losses to cybercrime and attacks have increased in 2024. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, phishing is the leading cause of complaints to its Internet Crime Complaint Center and business email compromise currently ranks second out of all tracked forms of cybercrime in terms of total losses.

Over the coming days and weeks, there are several events that cybercriminals take advantage of in their attacks and scams. The UEFA European Football Championship is currently taking place in Germany and thousands of individual phishing campaigns have been detected so far that are piggybacking on the popularity of the championship in Europe and beyond.

Cybercriminals often take advantage of sporting events and commonly use lures related to tickets, which usually sell out months before the first football is kicked and this year is no exception. Now that the tournament is underway and broadcasters and other legitimate entities are running competitions offering free tickets to the finals, scammers are doing the same and are using email and social media networks to advertise their scams. These campaigns use realistic websites that are almost identical to the brands they spoof and attempt to steal sensitive information such as credit card numbers and login credentials.

Many of the phishing attacks and scams impersonate businesses associated with the tournament. These include accommodation providers, airlines and travel companies, and others. The Wimbledon tennis tournament is underway, which will be shortly followed by another major sporting event in Paris – The 2024 Olympics. The latter has a huge global audience and there is a high risk of cyber threat activity using Olympics-themed lures. Cybercriminals are impersonating event organizations, sponsors, ticketing systems, and travel companies. Many cyber espionage groups and nation-state actors are likely to target the Olympics, in addition to financially motivated threat actors.

This week, there is a major celebration in the United States on July 4. Independence Day is a very active time for a host of malicious actors who conduct scams related to the celebrations, including holiday-themed texts and emails, fake giveaways and vouchers, and Independence Day event ticket scams. Being a major holiday in the United States when staffing levels are greatly reduced, it is a time when many ransomware groups choose to strike as their activities are less likely to be identified.

Also on July 4, 2024, a major event is taking place across the Atlantic in the UK. The UK general election will be taking place to decide the next government and scammers are already taking advantage and are using deepfake scams and malicious websites used to steal information and influence voters. It will be a similar story in the United States in the run-up to the November Presidential election.

With so many events taking place, it is vital for everyone to be on their guard and be constantly alert to the threat of scams, phishing, and malware attacks. Due to the elevated threat from phishing, businesses should step up their security awareness training to raise awareness of cyber threats and teach cybersecurity best practices. It is a good idea to use these events in your internal phishing simulations to identify any knowledge gaps and provide immediate training to any individual who fails a phishing simulation.

Security awareness training is made simple with SafeTitan from TitanHQ. SafeTitan is a comprehensive security awareness training platform that teaches security best practices to eradicate risky behaviors, raises awareness of the threat from phishing and malware, teaches the red flags to look for in emails and texts, and what to do if a potential threat is found. The phishing simulator can be used to automate internal phishing simulations to test awareness of threats and how employees are applying their training.

It is also a good time for businesses to bolster email security with an advanced email security solution. SpamTitan from TitanHQ is an advanced email security solution that uses predictive techniques to identify malicious emails, including AI and machine learning to block phishing threats and email sandboxing to block malware. SpamTitan integrates seamlessly with Microsoft 365 and is consistently rated as one of the best spam filters for Outlook, improving the native defenses that Microsoft offers. TitanHQ also offers a host of cybersecurity solutions for managed services providers, including advanced phishing protection, to help them better protect their clients.

If you want to improve protection this summer against increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks and scams, give the TitanHQ team a call to find out more about improving your security posture.

Malicious Email Campaign Deliver a Malware Cluster Bomb of Up to 10 Viruses

by titanadmin | Jun 30, 2024 | Phishing & Email Spam |

Many malware infections start with a malicious email that contains a file attachment with a malicious script that downloads malware if executed. One response to a single email is all it takes to infect the user’s device with malware, which may be able to spread across the network or at least provide the threat actor with the foothold they need in the network for follow-on activities. There is a much worse scenario, however. Rather than a single user infecting the network with one malware variant, that single response to the malicious email results in multiple malware infections. One campaign has been identified that does just that. A malware cluster bomb is delivered that can infect the user’s device with up to 10 different malware variants.

The campaign was identified by researchers at KrakenLabs and has been attributed to a threat actor known as Unfurling Hemlock. The campaign is being conducted globally with at least 10 countries known to have been attacked, although most of the victims have so far been located in the United States. The campaign has been running since at least February 2024 and uses two methods to deliver the malware variants – malicious emails and malware loaders installed by other threat groups. The threat actor has already distributed hundreds of thousands of malicious files in the 5 months since the operation is believed to have commenced.

In the email campaign conducted by Unfurling Hemlock, the victim is tricked into downloading a file called WExtract.exe which contains nested cabinet files, each containing a different malware variant. If the file is executed, the malware is extracted in sequence, and each malware variant is executed in reverse order, starting with the last malware variant to be extracted. Each malware cluster bomb has between four and seven stages, with some of those stages delivering multiple malware variants.

The malware variants delivered vary but they consist of information stealers, backdoors, malware loaders, and botnets. Information stealers include Redline Stealer, Mystic Stealer, and RisePro, and malware loaders including Amadey and SmokeLoader. Other malware variants are used to disable security solutions such as Windows Defender, help with obfuscation and hiding malware payloads, gathering system information, and reporting on the status of the malware infections.

It is not clear how the threat actor is using these malware infections. They could be delivering malware for other threat actors and selling the access, using the malware to harvest credentials to sell on the darkweb, conducting their own attacks using whatever malware variant serves their purpose, or a combination of the three. What the attack does ensure is maximum flexibility, as there are high levels of redundancy to ensure that if some of the malware variants are detected, some are likely to remain.

The delivery of multiple malware variants means this campaign could be highly damaging, but it also increases the chance of detection. While antivirus software is a must and may detect some of the malware variants, others are likely to go undetected. The key to blocking attacks is to prevent the initial phishing emails from reaching end users and to provide training to the workforce to help with the identification and avoidance of these malicious emails.

Many email security solutions rely on antivirus engines to detect malware but cybercriminals are skilled at bypassing these signature-based defenses. TitanHQ’s SpamTitan anti-spam software, SpamTitan, uses dual antivirus engines as part of the initial checks but also email sandboxing for behavioral analysis. Suspicious emails are sent to the sandbox where files are unpacked and their behavior is analyzed in depth. The behavioral analysis identifies malicious actions, resulting in the messages being quarantined for further analysis by the security team. SpamTitan also includes AI and machine-learning algorithms to check how messages deviate from the emails typically received and can identify new threats that have previously not been seen. SpamTitan is a highly effective Microsoft 365 spam filter and can be provided as a gateway spam filter or a cloud-based anti-spam service.

End user training is an important extra layer of security that helps eradicate bad security practices and teaches employees how to recognize and avoid malicious emails. Should a malicious bypass email security defenses, trained employees will be more likely to recognize and report the threat to the security team. Training data from SafeTitan, TitanHQ’s security awareness training platform and phishing simulator, shows the training and phishing simulations can reduce susceptibility to email attacks by up to 80% when provided regularly throughout the year.

Give the TitanHQ sales team a call today for more information on these and other cybersecurity solutions to improve your defenses against the full range of cyber threats.

New Campaigns Use Trojanized Software Downloaders to Distribute Dangerous Information Stealers

by titanadmin | Jun 28, 2024 | Phishing & Email Spam |

Two new malware distribution campaigns have been detected that deliver dangerous information-stealing malware, both targeting individuals looking to download free and pirated software.

Trojaninized Cisco Webex Meetings App Delivers Malware Loader and Information Stealer

Another malware distribution campaign has been identified that is using trojanized installers for free and pirated software to deploy a malware loader called Hijack Loader, which in turn delivers an information stealer. In the attacks, the victim was tricked into downloading a trojanized version of the Cisco Webex Meetings App, a video streaming app. The user downloaded a password-protected archive (RAR) file, which contained a file called setup.exe. When the victim executed the file, DLL sideloading was used to launch the HijackLoader, which was injected into a Windows binary.

HijackLoader connects with its command-and-control server and downloads another binary, an information stealer called Vidar Stealer. The malware bypasses User Account Control (UAC), escalates privileges, and adds an exception to the Windows Defender exclusion list. Vidar Stealer is used to steal credentials from browsers and deliver additional malware payloads, including a cryptocurrency miner. This campaign primarily targets organizations in Latin America and the Asia Pacific region.

Google Ads Used to Target Mac Users and Deliver Poseidon Malware

An information stealer called Poseidon is being distributed via malicious Google Ads that claim to provide the popular Arc web browser. The campaign targets Mac users and delivers a trojanized version of the Arc browser installer. If the installer is launched, the user gets the browser but is also infected with the malware.

According to an analysis from Malwarebytes, the new information stealer has similar features to the notorious Atomic Stealer, including a file grabber, crypto wallet extractor, and the ability to steal passwords from password managers such as Bitwarden and KeepassXC, passwords stored in browsers, and browser histories. The targeting of password managers makes this malware particularly dangerous, potentially allowing the theft of all passwords. The researchers believe the malware has been set up as a rival to Atomic Stealer

How to Protect Your Business

Protecting against malware requires a defense-in-depth approach to security, where several different security solutions provide multiple overlapping layers of protection. These security measures should include the following:

Antivirus software – Antivirus software is a must. The software will be able to detect malware when it is downloaded onto a device or is executed. The malware is identified by its signature, which means that a particular malware variant must be known and its signature must be present in the malware definition list used by that software. Antivirus software will not detect novel malware variants without behavioral analysis of files.

Web filter – One of the best defenses against malware distributed via the internet is a web filter. The web filter blocks downloads of malicious files by preventing downloads of executable files from the Internet, blocking access to known malicious websites, and limiting the sites that users can visit on their corporate-owned devices. The main advantage of a web filter is the threat is dealt with before any files are downloaded from the Internet.

Security awareness training – Users should be warned about the risks of downloading software from the Internet, be taught how to identify the signs of phishing and malicious emails, and be trained on security best practices. The latter should include carefully checking the domain of the website offering software and making sure it is the official website of the software vendor or a reputable software distributor.

Email security solution – Malware is often delivered via email, usually via a malicious script in an attached file or via a linked web page. An email security solution needs to have antivirus capabilities – signature-based detection and behavioral analysis in an email sandbox. The former will detect known malware variants and email sandboxing is used to detect novel malware variants.  Your email security solutions should also include AI-based detection, which can identify malicious messages based on how they differ from standard messages received by your business and perform comparisons with previous malware distribution campaigns.

While TitanHQ does not provide antivirus software, TitanHQ can help with web filtering (WebTitan), email security (SpamTitan), phishing protection (PhishTitan), and security awareness training (SafeTitan). For more information on improving your defenses against malware and TitanHQ’s multi-award-winning cloud-based email security and internet security solutions for businesses and managed service providers, give the TitanHQ team a call today.

Phishing Is the Most Common Type of Cyberattack in the UK but BEC is the Costliest

by titanadmin | May 30, 2024 | Phishing & Email Spam |

Last month, the UK government published the findings of its 2024 cyber security breaches survey. The annual survey was conducted by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) in partnership with the Home Office between September 2023 and January 2024 on 2,000 UK businesses, 1,004 registered UK charities, and 430 educational institutions. The survey provides insights into the nature of cyberattacks and data breaches experienced in the UK and confirms that attacks are increasing.

In the past year, 50% of surveyed businesses and almost one-third of charities (32%) experienced at least one cybersecurity breach or attack, with medium-sized businesses (70%), large businesses (74%), and high-income charities with £500,000+ annual income (66%) more likely to experience a cybersecurity breach.

It is often reported that cyberattacks are becoming more sophisticated; however, the most common cyber threats are relatively unsophisticated and are often effective. The most common type of cyberattack was phishing, which was reported by 84% of businesses and 83% of charities, with impersonation of organizations – online and via email – reported by more than one-third of businesses (35%) and charities (37%). Malware was used in 17% of attacks on businesses and 14% of attacks on charities. In terms of prevalence, phishing was by far the most common type of cybercrime. 90% of businesses and 94% of charities that were victims of cybercrime experienced at least one phishing attack.

The costliest type of phishing attack is business email compromise (BEC). BEC covers several types of attacks, with the most common involving criminals accessing work email accounts and using them to trick others into transferring funds or sending sensitive data. For example, a threat actor gains access to an email account of a vendor and uses the account to send an email to a customer containing a fake invoice or a request to change bank account information for an upcoming payment.

The losses to BEC attacks can be considerable. Attacks frequently result in fraudulent transfers of tens of thousands of pounds or in some cases hundreds of thousands or millions. With such large sums involved, criminals put considerable effort into these scams. Targets are researched, phishing is used to compromise an employee email account, internal phishing is used to gain access to the right accounts, the contents of accounts are studied to identify information that can be used in the scam, and the legitimate account holder is impersonated in the attack on the targeted organization or individual.

The goal in these attacks is often to gain access to the email account of the CEO or a senior executive, and that account is used to conduct a scam internally or externally. Since the request comes from a trusted authority figure and uses their legitimate account, the request is often not questioned.

BEC attacks can be difficult to identify by employees but also by email security solutions as trusted accounts are used for the scams and the emails usually do not contain any malicious content such as a URL to a phishing website or malware. These attacks use social engineering and target human weaknesses.

Defending against BEC and phishing attacks requires a combination of measures. Since targets are extensively researched, businesses should consider reducing their digital footprint and making it harder for cybercriminals to obtain information that can be used in convincing phishing and BEC campaigns, especially by reducing the amount of information that is available online about senior staff members.

Anti-spam software is a must for blocking the initial phishing attacks that are used to compromise accounts; however, an advanced solution is required to block sophisticated BEC attacks. TitanHQ’s cloud-based anti-spam service – SpamTitan – performs a barrage of spam checks for inbound and outbound emails to identify spam, phishing, and BEC content, including reputation checks of domains and accounts, scans of message content, sandboxing to identify malicious attachments, and AI and machine learning analysis to identify emails that deviate from the standard messages typically received by an organization.

PhishTitan is an anti-phishing solution for Microsoft 365 that enhances Microsoft’s anti-phishing measures and catches the phishing threats that Microsoft misses. The solution adds banners to emails to warn employees about potentially malicious content and allows security teams to quickly remediate phishing attempts across the entire email environment.

Since phishing and BEC attacks target human weaknesses, it is vital to provide training to the workforce. The aim should be to improve awareness and condition employees to always be on the lookout for a scam and to err on the side of caution and report suspicious emails to their IT security team. Phishing simulations are useful for helping staff to recognize phishing emails and identify knowledge gaps. TitanHQ’s SafeTitan training platform has all the content you need to run effective training programs to improve defenses against phishing and BEC attacks.

Contact TitanHQ today about these solutions and other ways you can improve your defenses against phishing, BEC, and other types of cyberattacks.

Remcos RAT Now Distributed in Spam Email Using VHD Attachments

by titanadmin | Apr 24, 2024 | Phishing & Email Spam |

Cybercriminals are constantly evolving their tactics for delivering malware and one of the most recent changes concerns the Remcos RAT.  Remcos was developed by Breaking Security as a legitimate remote administration tool that can be used for network maintenance, system monitoring, surveillance, and penetration testing; however, the tool has been weaponized to create the Remcos Remote Access Trojan (RAT).

The Remocos RAT has extensive capabilities and has been used by cybercriminals since 2016. The malware allows threat actors to take control of systems and maintain persistent, highly privileged remote access. The malware can be used for a range of purposes, with threat actors commonly using it for credential theft, man-in-the-middle internet connections, and to create botnets of infected devices that can be used for distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS).

The Remcos RAT is distributed in spam email campaigns. Since 2016, the most common method for distributing the malware used spam emails with malicious Office attachments. Social engineering techniques were used to trick users into opening the files and enabling macros; however, campaigns have recently been detected that deliver the malware via weaponized virtual hard disk (VHD) files.

Security awareness training often focuses on teaching users to be careful when opening Office files and other file types commonly associated with malware distribution. The change to a more unusual file type could result in the file being opened, and VHD files are less likely to be identified as malicious by email security solutions.

An analysis of the extracted VHD files revealed a shortcut file that contained a PowerShell command line that executed a malicious script that ultimately delivered the Remcos RAT via a sophisticated multi-stage delivery method designed to evade security solutions. Once installed, the malware can log keystrokes, take screenshots, and exfiltrate data to its command-and-control server. The malware also has mass-mailer capabilities and can send copies of itself via email from an infected device. According to Check Point, the Remcos RAT rose to the 4^th most prevalent malware threat in March 2024.

The constantly changing tactics for distributing malware mean network defenders need cybersecurity solutions that can adapt and detect zero-day threats. SpamTitan is an advanced email filtering service with AI and machine learning-driven threat detection which is capable of identifying and blocking novel phishing and malware distribution methods. The machine learning algorithm uses predictive technology to identify previously unseen attacks, emails are scanned using twin antivirus engines, and suspicious file types are sent to a next-generation sandbox for behavioral analysis, ensuring even previously unseen malware variants can be identified and blocked.

SpamTitan scans all inbound emails and also includes an outbound email filter to identify malicious emails that are sent from compromised email accounts and by malicious insiders. SpamTitan also has data loss protection capabilities, allowing IT teams to detect and block internal data loss. If your corporate email filter does not include advanced threat protection including AI-driven detection and sandboxing, or if you rely on Microsoft’s anti-spam and anti-phishing protection, sophisticated threats such as zero-day attacks are unlikely to be blocked and your business will be at risk.

Give the TitanHQ team a call today to find out more about SpamTitan. SpamTitan is delivered as a cloud-based anti-spam service that integrates seamlessly with Microsoft 365 to improve protection, or as a gateway solution for on-premises protection, which can be installed on existing hardware as a virtual anti-spam appliance.

Large-scale StrelaStealer Malware Campaign Spreads to US and Europe

by titanadmin | Mar 28, 2024 | Phishing & Email Spam |

A phishing campaign distributing StrelaStealer malware has expanded to Europe and the United States, with the attackers favoring the high-tech, finance, professional and legal services, manufacturing, government, energy, utilities, insurance, and construction sectors.

StrelaStealer malware was first identified in November 2022 and its primary purpose is to extract email account login credentials from popular email clients such as Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird, and exfiltrate them to its command-and-control server. StrelaStealer has previously been used to target companies in Spanish-speaking countries however, targeting has now been expanded to the United States and Europe, with attacks peaking in November 2023 and January 2023 with more than 500 attacks a day on companies in the United States and more than 100 attacks per day in Europe, according to tracking data from Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 team.

The campaign uses email as the initial access vector with the emails typically claiming to be an invoice. Early attacks used ISO file attachments that included a .lnk shortcut and an HTML file, which invoked the rundll32.exe process to execute the malware payload. The latest attacks use a different method, with .zip file attachments favored. These compressed files include Jscript files which, if executed, drop a batch file and base64-encoded file that decodes into a DLL file, which is executed using rundll32.exe to deploy the StrelaStealer payload.

Email sandboxing provides a vital layer of protection against malware, which can be difficult to detect using transitional signature-based email security solutions. Anti-virus solutions are generally signature-based, which means they can only detect known malware. Advanced email security solutions use sandboxing to analyze the behavior of files to identify and block novel malware threats. Suspicious files are sent to the sandbox for in-depth behavioral analysis. The control flow obfuscation technique used in this attack can make analysis difficult, even in sandboxed environments, with excessively long code blocks used that can result in timeouts when executed in some sandboxed environments. While sandboxing can delay email delivery, which is far from ideal for businesses that need to act on emails quickly, it is important to provide enough time to allow attachments to be fully analyzed, as StrelaStealer malware clearly demonstrates. The easiest way for businesses to sandbox email attachments is with SpamTitan Email Security.

StrelaStealer malware is actively evolving, and new methods are being developed to deliver the malware and evade security solutions. Combatting sophisticated phishing attacks such as this, requires a defense-in-depth approach to security, using multiple security solutions that provide overlapping layers of protection such as SpamTitan Email Security, PhishTitan phishing protection, and SafeTitan security awareness training. Give the TitanHQ team a call today for more information on affordable cybersecurity solutions that are easy to use and capable of blocking advanced phishing threats.

Tycoon 2FA Phishing Kit Targets M365 and Gmail Credentials and Bypasses MFA

by titanadmin | Mar 27, 2024 | Phishing & Email Spam |

Phishing is one of the most common methods used to gain access to credentials; however, businesses are increasingly implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA) which adds an extra layer of protection and means stolen credentials cannot be used on their own to gain access to accounts. An additional authentication factor is required before access to the account is granted. While any form of MFA is better than none, MFA does not protect against all phishing attacks. There are several popular phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platforms that can steal credentials and bypass MFA including LabHost, Greatness, and Robin Banks. For a relatively small fee, any cybercriminal looking to compromise accounts can use the PhaaS platform and gain access to MFA-protected accounts.

A relatively new PhaaS platform has been growing in popularity since its discovery in October 2023 which has been causing concern in the cybersecurity community. Dubbed Tycoon 2FA, the PhaaS platform is being offered through private Telegram groups. Like many other PhaaS platforms, Tycoon 2FA uses adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) tactics to steal MFA tokens, allowing access to be gained to accounts. The phishing kit uses at least 1,100 domains and has been used in thousands of phishing attacks.

Like most phishing attacks, initial contact is made with end users via email. The messages include a malicious link or a QR code. QR codes are popular with phishers as they communicate a URL to the end user and are difficult for email security solutions to identify as malicious. To ensure that the malicious URLs are not detected by security solutions, after clicking the link or visiting the website via the QR code, the user must pass a security challenge (Cloudflare Turnstile). The web page to which the user is directed targets Microsoft 365 or Gmail credentials. The user’s email address is captured and used to prefill the login page, and when the user enters their password it is captured and they are directed to a fake MFA page.

The phishing kit uses a reverse proxy server that relays the user’s credentials to the legitimate service being targeted in real-time and similarly captures the session cookie when the MFA challenge is passed. The user is unlikely to recognize that their account has been compromised as they are redirected to a legitimate-looking page when the MFA mechanism is passed. According to the researchers, many different threat actors have been using the kit for their phishing campaigns, with the Tycoon 2FA operators having received almost $395,000 in payments to their Bitcoin wallet as of March 2024. The price of the phishing kit is $120 for 10 days of usage which shows how popular the platform is with cybercriminals.

PhaaS platforms allow cybercriminals to conduct sophisticated attacks and bypass MFA without having to invest time and money setting up their own infrastructure they significantly lower the entry barrier for conducting MFA-bypassing phishing attacks. An advanced spam filtering service such as SpamTitan Plus will help to prevent malicious emails from reaching inboxes, and is an ideal spam filter for MSPs looking to provide the best level of protection for their clients. The SpamTitan suite of email security solutions combines phishing, spam, and antivirus filtering and independent tests show a spam block rate of 99.983% and a malware block rate of 99.51%.

PhishTitan from TitanHQ greatly improves protection against more advanced phishing campaigns such as those that use QR codes. Employees should be provided with regular security awareness training to help them identify and avoid phishing messages, and businesses should consider using phishing-resistant MFA rather than more basic forms of 2-factor authentication that use SMS or one-time passwords, which phishing kits such as Tycoon 2FA can easily bypass.

U.S. Government Entities Impersonated in Business Email Compromise Attacks

by titanadmin | Mar 27, 2024 | Phishing & Email Spam |

Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks may not be as frequently encountered as phishing attacks but the losses to this type of attack are far greater. According to figures from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), $2.9 billion was lost last year to BEC attacks – The second most expensive type of cybercrime.

BEC attacks usually involve impersonation, with the attacker posing as a trusted individual. Contact is established and the scammer tricks the victim into divulging sensitive company information or transferring a large sum of money. For instance, the scammer may pose as a contractor and request that bank details are changed for an upcoming payment. The scam is not usually detected until after the transfer has been made and the funds have been withdrawn from the attacker-controlled account.

BEC attacks can be difficult for email security solutions to identify, as the emails are often sent from a known and trusted email account that has been compromised in a phishing attack. BEC scammers research their targets and may have access to past conversations between the victim and the person they are impersonating and can therefore disclose information from past conversations in email exchanges to convince the target that they are who they claim they are. The scams may also be spread across multiple emails, with trust building during the exchanges.

One of the latest BEC campaigns to be identified involves the impersonation of U.S. government entities, such as the U.S. Department of Transportation, Department of Agriculture, and Small Business Association. Initial contact is made via email and a PDF attachment is sent that includes a QR code, which has links about fake bidding processes. The targeted individual is told to use the QR code to find out more information about the bidding process.

The PDF file explains that the QR code is included as complaints have been received that the bid button in the email does not work with some browsers and that the QR code will direct them to a document that should be downloaded as it is required to submit a bid. The emails and the PDF are crafted to appear to have been sent by the spoofed organization, and the website to which the user is directed resembles the official portal used by the spoofed government agency.

If the QR code is scanned, the user will be directed to a phishing site where they will be required to enter their Office 365 credentials, which will provide the attacker with access to their email account. Once access has been gained, the scammers can proceed to the next phase of the attack. They search the email account for messages related to banking or finance and use that information for their BEC attack and send messages to contacts that include fraudulent invoices or payment requests. The emails are sent from a trusted account, so the emails will likely be delivered and there is a good chance that the attack will be successful.

Security awareness training can help to raise awareness of the threat of these attacks with individuals involved in financial transactions in a company, and policies should be in place that require any requested change to banking information to be verified by phone using a previously verified phone number. It is also important to have an email security solution in place to block or flag potential BEC messages.

TitanHQ’s PhishTitan is an ideal choice. PhishTitan can identify and flag sophisticated phishing and BEC emails and can also read and follow the URLs encoded in QR codes. When a suspicious email is detected a banner is added to warn the user, and the emails can be auto-remediated and sent to the junk folder. PhishTitan improves Microsoft’s Office 365 spam filter. Independent tests by Virus Bulletin show the engine that powers T

itanHQ’s SpamTitan spam filter for Office 365 and the PhishTitan 0365 anti-phishing solution has a phishing catch rate of 99.914% with zero false positives. For every 80,000 emails received, PhishTitan identifies and blocks 20 unique, sophisticated phishing attempts that Microsoft’s top anti-phishing solution misses. The solution is also just a fraction of the cost of the average loss to a single BEC attack.

For more information about PhishTitan and how it can protect your business from advanced phishing and BEC attacks, give the TitanHQ team a call.

Facebook Messages Used to Distribute Snake Infostealer Malware

by titanadmin | Mar 20, 2024 | Phishing & Email Spam |

Malware is often distributed via email or websites linked in emails, and advanced email security solutions such as SpamTitan Plus can protect you by preventing the messages from reaching inboxes. SpamTitan Plus uses dual antivirus engines to detect known malware and sandboxing to identify and block zero-day malware threats. SpamTitan Plus also rewrites URLs, uses predictive analysis to identify suspicious URLs, and blocks those URLs to prevent users from reaching the websites where malware is hosted. To get around email security solutions, cybercriminals use other methods for making initial contact with end users, and instant messaging services are a popular alternative.

Researchers at Cybereason recently identified a malware distribution campaign that distributes a Python-based information stealer via Facebook messages. The infostealer has been dubbed Snake and has been developed to steal credentials and other sensitive information. The campaign was first detected in the summer of 2023 and targets businesses. The messages use lures such as complaints and offers of products from suppliers to trick users into visiting a link and downloading a file. As is common with malware distribution campaigns, the threat actor uses legitimate public repositories for hosting the malicious file, such as GitHub and GitLab. The file to which the user is directed is a compressed file and, if extracted, will lead to the execution of a first-stage downloader. The first-stage downloader fetches a second compressed file,  extracts the contents, and executes a second downloader, which delivers the Python infostealer.

Three different variants of the infostealer have been identified, all of which gain persistence via the StartUp folder. Each variant targets web browsers, including Brave, Chromium, Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera, and the Vietnamese CoC CoC browser, with the latter and other evidence suggesting that the campaign is being conducted by a Vietnamese threat actor. All three variants also target Facebook cookies. The gathered data and cookies are exfiltrated in a .zip file via the Telegram Bot API or Discord.

One way of blocking these attacks is to use a web filter to block access to instant messaging services that are not required for business purposes, including Facebook Messenger. With WebTitan it is possible to block Messenger without blocking the Facebook site, and controls can be implemented for different users to allow users with responsibility for updating the organization’s social media sites to access the platforms while preventing access for other users. It is also a good practice to use WebTitan to block downloads of executable files from the Internet to prevent malware delivery and stop employees from downloading and installing unauthorized software.

Dropbox Abused in Novel Phishing Attack to Obtain M365 Credentials

by titanadmin | Mar 14, 2024 | Phishing & Email Spam |

The file hosting service Dropbox is being abused in a novel phishing campaign that exploits trust in the platform to harvest Microsoft 365 credentials. The campaign targeted 16 employees of an organization who received an email from the no-reply[@]dropbox.com account, a legitimate email account that is used by Dropbox. The emails included a link that directed the recipients to a Dropbox-hosted PDF file, which was named to appear as if it had been created by one of the organization’s partners. If the PDF file was opened, the user would see a link that directs them to an unrelated domain – mmv-security[.]top. One of the employees was then sent a follow-up email reminding them to open the PDF file that was sent in the first email. They did, and they were directed to a phishing page that spoofed the Microsoft 365 login page. A couple of days later, suspicious logins were detected in the user’s Microsoft 365 account from unknown IP addresses, which were investigated and found to be associated with ExpressVPN, indicating the attacker was using the VPN to access the account and mask their IP address.

Multifactor authentication was correctly configured on the account but this appears to have been bypassed, with the logins appearing to use a valid MFA token. After capturing credentials, the employee is thought to have unknowingly approved the MFA authentication request which allowed the account to be compromised. The attacker gained access to the user’s email account and set up a new rule that moved emails from the organization’s accounts team to the Conversation History folder to hide the malicious use of the mailbox. Emails were also sent from the account to the accounts team in an apparent attempt to compromise their accounts.

Phishing attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated and much more difficult for end users to identify. Security awareness training programs often teach users about the red flags in emails they should look out for, such as unsolicited emails from unknown senders, links to unusual domains, and to be wary of any requests that have urgency and carry a threat should no action be taken. Impersonation is common in phishing attacks, but in this case, the impersonation went further with the emails sent from a valid and trusted account. That means that the email is more likely to be trusted and unlikely to be blocked by email security solutions, especially as the emails include a link to a file hosted on a trusted platform. This was also a staged attack, with follow-up emails sent, which in this case proved effective even though the second email was delivered to the junk email folder. The login page to which the user was directed looked exactly the same as the genuine login prompt for Microsoft 365, aside from the domain on which it was hosted.

Many businesses have configured multifactor authentication on their Microsoft 365 accounts, but as this attack demonstrates, MFA can be bypassed. The sophisticated nature of phishing attacks such as this demonstrates how important it is for businesses to have advanced defenses against phishing. TitanHQ’s anti-phishing solutions use AI and a large language model (LLM) with proprietary threat intelligence currently not found in any other anti-phishing and anti-spam software solutions on the market. All emails are scanned – internal and external – for phrases and keywords that are unusual and could indicate malicious intent. All URLs are checked against various threat intelligence feeds to identify malicious URLs, and URLs are rewritten to show their true destination. The solution also learns from feedback provided by users and detection improves further over time. The curated and unique email threat intelligence data is unmatched in visibility, coverage, and accuracy, and TitanHQ’s anti-spam and email security solutions feature sandboxing, where attachments are subjected to deep analysis in addition to signature-based anti-virus scanning. When a malicious email is detected, all other instances are removed from the entire M365 tenant.

If you want to improve your defenses against sophisticated phishing attacks give the TitanHQ team a call. If you are a Managed Service Provider looking for an easy-to-use solution to protect your clients from phishing and malware, look no further than TitanHQ. All solutions have been developed from the ground up to meet the needs of MSPs to better protect their customers from spam, phishing, malware, and BEC attacks.

CryptoChameleon Phishing Kit Targets FCC Employees and Cryptocurrency Platform Users

by titanadmin | Mar 5, 2024 | Phishing & Email Spam |

A new phishing kit has been identified that is being used to target employees of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the cryptocurrency platforms Binance and Coinbase, as well as users of cryptocurrency platforms such as Binance, Coinbase, Caleb & Brown, Gemini, Kraken, ShakePay, and Trezor.

A phishing kit is a set of tools and templates that allows threat actors to conduct effective phishing campaigns. These kits are marketed on the dark web to hackers and allow them to conduct phishing campaigns without having to invest time and money into setting up their own infrastructure. Phishing kits range from simple kits that provide phishing templates and cloned login pages, to more advanced kits that are capable of adversary-in-the-middle attacks that can defeat multifactor authentication. These kits significantly lower the entry barrier for conducting phishing campaigns as they require little technical expertise. Pay a relatively small fee and sophisticated phishing campaigns can be conducted in a matter of minutes.

The new phishing kit is called CryptoChameleon and allows users to create carbon copies of the single sign-on (SSO) pages that are used by the targeted businesses. Employees are used to authenticating through a single solution, through which they authenticate with many business applications. The kit also includes templates for phishing pages to harvest the credentials of cryptocurrency platform users and employees, including pages that impersonate Okta, iCloud, Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, AOL, and Twitter.

The phishing operation was discovered by researchers at Lookout and more than 100 high-value victims of this campaign have been identified to date. Threat actors using the kit have been contacting users via SMS, email, and phone calls to trick them into visiting a malicious site where their credentials are harvested. Users are redirected to a phishing site but before the content is displayed, they are required to pass an hCAPTCHA check. This helps with the credibility of the campaign, but most importantly it prevents automated analysis tools and security solutions from identifying the phishing site.

In the campaign targeting FCC employees, after passing the hCAPTCHA check, the user is presented with a login page that is a carbon copy of the FCC Okta page. The domain on which the page is hosted – fcc-okta[.com] – differs only slightly (1 character) from the legitimate FCC Okta login page. Login credentials alone are not normally enough to gain access to accounts as many are now protected by MFA. The captured login credentials are used to log in to the real account in real time, and the victim is then directed to the appropriate page where additional information is collected to pass the MFA checks. This could be a page that requests their SMS-based token or the MFA token from their authenticator app. Once the MFA check has been passed and the account has been accessed by the threat actor, the victim can be redirected anywhere. For instance, they could be shown a message that the login has been unsuccessful and they must try again later.

To target cryptocurrency platform users, messages are sent about security alerts such as warnings that their account has been accessed. These messages are likely to attract a rapid response due to the risk of substantial financial losses. In the campaign targeting Coinbase, the user is told they can secure their account and if they log in they can terminate suspicious devices. A similar process is used to obtain the credentials and MFA codes needed to access the account as the FCC campaign.

This is just one of many phishing kits offered on the dark web. Protecting against these phishing kits requires a combination of measures including an advanced spam filter, web filter, and security awareness training. For further information on cybersecurity solutions capable of combatting advanced phishing attempts, give the TitanHQ team a call.

Phishing-as-a-Service Poses a Serious Threat to Businesses

by titanadmin | Feb 28, 2024 | Phishing & Email Spam |

Cybercriminals are increasingly offering services that make it easy for anyone to conduct an attack. Skilled malware developers can concentrate on writing their malware and making it available for others to use for a fee, ransomware-as-a-service allows hackers who are skilled at breaching networks to conduct lucrative ransomware attacks without having to develop encryptors and pay for the infrastructure to their support attacks, and phishing-as-a-service provides a platform for conducting attacks to steal credentials and access accounts. These services benefit all parties and allow even more attacks to be conducted.

Phishing campaigns may appear simple, but they require a lot of time and skill to set up. Stephanie Carruthers, who leads an IBM X-Force phishing research project, said it takes her team about 16 hours to craft a phishing email, not including the time it takes to set up all the necessary infrastructure to send the email and steal credentials. Setting up the infrastructure is time-consuming and costly, and many businesses now have multi-factor authentication (MFA) to thwart attacks.

With phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS), anyone who wants to run a phishing campaign can simply pay a subscription and will be provided with all the tools they need to conduct attacks. They do not need to craft the phishing emails, they just need to set a few parameters and provide the email addresses for the campaign. PhaaS makes conducting sophisticated attacks simple and significantly lowers the bar for conducting campaigns.

Take LabHost, for example, a PhaaS platform that recently introduced functionality for targeting financial institutions and banks in North America and Canada. Since this new functionality was included in the first half of 2023, attacks have increased considerably. A monthly subscription is paid, and customers are provided with a turnkey phishing kit, which includes the infrastructure for hosting phishing pages, a content generator for creating phishing emails, and a portal for monitoring the progress of campaigns. Customers can choose to pay $179 per month to target Canadian banks, $249 per month to expand the targets to North America, and $300 a month to also target 70 financial institutions worldwide. Customers are also provided with phishing pages for collecting credentials or a variety of other companies, including music streaming sites, delivery services, and telecommunications companies.

Important to the success of any campaign is the ability to defeat multi-factor authentication. The LabHost phishing kit incorporates LabRat, a phishing tool that allows real-time management of phishing campaigns and allows adversary-in-the-middle attacks where two-factor authentication codes and cookies are obtained in addition to usernames and passwords. That means the additional security processes on the online portals of banks can be circumvented. The platform also allows SMS-based attacks to be conducted.

PhaaS allows unskilled hackers to conduct effective campaigns that they otherwise would not be able to conduct. Further, with the use of AI to craft convincing phishing emails, phishing emails are becoming much harder for humans and security solutions to detect, and even MFA and other security measures can be bypassed.

Defending against attacks is therefore challenging, and there is no single cybersecurity solution that will block all attacks. What is needed is a defense-in-depth approach, with multiple, overlapping layers of protection. Cybersecurity solutions are required to block the phishing emails. SpamTitan is an advanced email security solution with AI and machine learning capabilities for identifying novel phishing threats. SpamTitan blocks known malware through AV controls and unknown malware through sandboxing. The message sandboxing feature uses pattern filtering to identify malware from its behavior, which allows zero-day malware threats to be identified and blocked. Malware sandboxing is vital for email security since so many novel malware threats are now being released. SpamTitan is also capable of identifying even machine-crafted phishing content.

End user training is also vital, as no email security solution will block all email threats without also blocking an unacceptable number of genuine emails. End users should be trained on how to identify, avoid, and report phishing emails. The SafeTitan security awareness training platform makes security awareness training simple, and the constantly updated content allows businesses to respond to changing phishing tactics and conduct phishing simulations on the workforce to reinforce training and identify knowledge gaps.

Given the number of phishing kits that are capable of bypassing multi-factor authentication, simply enabling MFA on accounts is no longer sufficient to protect against unauthorized access. Phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication is required – FIDO/ WebAuthn authentication or Public key infrastructure (PKI)-based MFA – to block adversary-in-the-middle attacks that can be conducted through PhaaS.

If you want to improve your defenses against phishing and other cybercriminal services, give the TitanHQ team a call to discuss your options.

Massive Spamming Campaign Uses Thousands of Hijacked Subdomains

by titanadmin | Feb 26, 2024 | Phishing & Email Spam |

A massive email spamming campaign has been detected that is generating up to 5 million emails per day that direct recipients of the emails to a variety of scam sites. The emails are sent through hijacked subdomains and domains of trusted companies, which help these emails evade email security solutions and be delivered to inboxes. Companies that have had domains and subdomains hijacked include eBay, CBS, McAfee, MSN, and Symantec.

Email security solutions perform a range of checks on inbound emails, including reputation checks on the senders of emails. If a domain is trusted and has not previously been associated with spamming, these checks – using SPK, DKIM, and DMARC – are likely to be passed, resulting in the emails being delivered to end users. The use of these legitimate domains also makes it harder for end users to determine whether the messages are genuine. Security awareness training programs often teach end users to check the sender of the email and make sure that it matches the company being spoofed. If the domain is eBay, and the email uses eBay branding, end users are likely to think that the communication is genuine. These emails include links to websites that generate fraudulent ad revenue, and often several redirects occur before the user lands on the destination scam or phishing site.

The ‘SubdoMailing’ campaign was identified by researchers at Guardio Labs, with the legitimate domains typically hijacked through SPF record exploitation or CNAME hijacking. The former involves searching for domains that use the ‘include’ configuration option that points to external domains that are no longer registered. Those domains are then registered by the threat actor and the SPF records are changed to authorize the use of their own email servers. When those servers are used to send emails, they appear to have been sent by the targeted brand, such as eBay.

With CNAME hijacking, scans are conducted to identify subdomains of reputable brands with CNAME records that point to external domains that are no longer registered. The threat actor then registers those domains, SPF records are injected, and emails can be sent from their email servers to show that they have been sent by a legitimate company. By hijacking huge numbers of domains and subdomains, the threat actor is able to conduct massive spamming campaigns. The researchers identified more than 13,000 subdomains and more than 8,000 domains that were used in the campaign, with more than 1000 residential lines used and almost 22,000 unique IPs. The researchers developed a tool to allow domain owners to check whether their own domains have been hijacked and take action to stop that abuse. An advanced spam filter is required to block the messages that are set from these hijacked domains and subdomains – one that does not rely on SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for identifying spam emails.

Travel Companies Impersonated in Malware Distribution Campaign

by titanadmin | Feb 26, 2024 | Phishing & Email Spam |

Cybercriminals are constantly devising new email campaigns for distributing malware. These campaigns usually impersonate a trusted entity and advise the email recipient about a pressing issue that requires immediate attention. The emails often have an attached file that must be opened to find out further information about the issue detailed in the email.

One recently detected campaign impersonates travel service providers such as booking.com and advises the recipient about a problem with a recent booking. One of the intercepted emails explains that an error has occurred with a booking that has resulted in a double charge to the user’s credit card which requires immediate attention. The email has a PDF attachment which needs to be opened for further information. PDF files are increasingly being used in email campaigns for distributing malware. The PDF files often contain a script that generates an error message when the file is opened that tells the user that the content of the file cannot be displayed, and they are provided with an option to download the file.

In this campaign, the PDF file contains a script that generates a fake popup message. If clicked, a connection is made to a malicious URL and a download of an obfuscated JavaScript file is initiated. The script downloads the next stage PowerShell payload, and on execution, drops a malicious DLL file on the device. The DLL file searches for certain critical system processes and attempts to forcibly stop them, makes changes to the registry that affect the Windows Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI) and ensures that the malware is executed without being detected by security solutions. An analysis of the DLL file by researchers at Forcepoint shows the file is from the Agent Tesla malware family. Agent Tesla is a remote access trojan (RAT) that first appeared in 2014 and grew in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Agent Tesla is provided under the malware-as-a-service model and is popular with initial access brokers, who specialize in gaining access to devices and accounts and then sell that access to other cybercriminals such as ransomware gangs.

Agent Tesla allows commands to be run on compromised systems and is capable of stealing sensitive information, such as login credentials stored in browsers. The malware can also take screenshots, log keystrokes, and perform other malicious actions. The malware uses multiple layers of obfuscation to ensure it is not detected by antivirus solutions. The malware is commonly used to gain initial access to business networks, primarily through phishing campaigns. In this campaign, by impersonating a popular travel service company there is a reasonable chance that the user may have used the service in the past or have a current booking and will therefore open the email. However, since the emails reference a charge to a credit card, that may be sufficient to get the user to open the attachment.

To protect against this and other malware distribution campaigns, businesses should ensure that they protect all endpoints with email security and antivirus solutions that are capable of behavioral analysis of files, as Agent Tesla and many other popular malware variants use obfuscation to bypass signature-based security solutions. Web filtering solutions provide added protection as they block connections to the malicious URLs that host malware and they can be configured to block downloads of executable files from the Internet. It is also important to provide security awareness training to the workforce to raise awareness of cyber threats and conduct phishing simulations to test the effectiveness of training.

TitanHQ offers a range of cybersecurity solutions for businesses and managed service providers to help them defend against cyber threats delivered via email and the Internet, including spam filtering with email sandboxing, web filtering, and security awareness training. Give the team a call today to find out more about improving your defenses against phishing and malware. All TitanHQ solutions are available on a free trial to allow you to test the products and see for yourself the difference they make.

Massive Phishing Campaign Leverages Google Cloud Run to Deliver Banking Trojans

by titanadmin | Feb 22, 2024 | Phishing & Email Spam |

A massive malware distribution campaign has been detected that uses phishing emails for initial contact with businesses and Google Cloud Run for hosting the malware. A variety of banking trojans are being distributed including Astaroth, Mekotio, and Ousaban. The campaign primarily targets countries in Latin America, and as such the majority of the phishing emails are in Spanish, but Italian versions have also been detected and there are indications that the campaign is spreading to other regions including Europe and North America.

The phishing emails used in this campaign appear to be legitimate invoices, statements, and communications from government and tax agencies and include a link that the recipient must click to view the attached invoice, statement, or demand. The link directs the user to services on Google Cloud Run, which is a popular service for hosting frontend and backend services and deploying websites and applications without having to manage infrastructure. Google Cloud Run has been used for hosting malware throughout 2023 but there was a massive spike in activity that started in September 2023 and has continued through January and February.

Over the past few months, Google’s service has been proving popular with cybercriminals for hosting malware as it is both cost-effective and is generally not blocked by security solutions. If a user clicks the email link, an MSI file is downloaded onto their device. MSI files are executable files, which in this case include embedded JavaScript that downloads additional files and delivers one or more banking trojans.

The banking trojans achieve persistence through LNK files in the startup folder that execute a PowerShell command on boot that runs the infection script. The banking trojans are capable of keylogging, clipboard monitoring, screenshots, credential theft, and traffic manipulation to direct users to cloned websites of financial institutions to capture banking credentials. The Astaroth banking trojan alone targets more than 300 financial institutions as well as cryptocurrency exchanges.

To protect against this and other malware distribution campaigns, businesses need to adopt a defense-in-depth approach and should implement multiple layers of protection. The first line of defense is a spam filter or email security solution to block the initial phishing emails. SpamTitan Plus is a leading-edge anti-spam service that provides maximum protection against malicious emails. The solution has better coverage, faster phishing link detections, and the lowest false positive rate of any product, which makes it the best spam filter for businesses and an ideal MSP spam filtering solution In addition to including all leading phishing feeds to ensure the fastest possible detection of new phishing threats, SpamTitan Plus uses predictive analysis to identify suspicious URLs that have not yet been detected as malicious.

A web filter, such as WebTitan, can be used to control access to the Internet. For example, blocks can be placed on websites and certain categories of websites down to the user level, the solution prevents access to all known malicious URLs, and can be configured to block file downloads from the Internet, such as MSI files and other executable files that are often used for malware delivery.

Cybercriminals often host malware on legitimate hosting platforms which are usually trusted by security solutions, which means malicious emails may be delivered to end users. It is therefore important to provide security awareness training for the workforce. Security awareness training raises awareness of the threats that employees are likely to encounter and teaches them security best practices to help them identify, avoid, and report cyber threats. Combined with phishing simulations, it is possible to greatly reduce susceptibility to phishing and malspam emails. Data from companies that use the SafeTitan security awareness training platform and phishing simulator shows susceptibility to phishing threats can be reduced by up to 80%.

If you are looking to improve your defenses against phishing and malware, give the TitanHQ team a call to find out more about these products and to help get you set up for a free trial to put these solutions to the test in your own environment.

Spear Phishing is the Most Common Method of Initial Access in the EU

by titanadmin | Feb 21, 2024 | Phishing & Email Spam |

A recent report from the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-EU) has provided insights into how EU organizations are being targeted by nation-state-sponsored actors and cybercriminal groups. The majority of nation-state activity has been linked to hacking groups in the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, and while it is not always possible to determine the motives behind cyberattacks and intrusions, the majority of nation-state hacking activity is believed to be conducted to achieve cyberespionage objectives. The aim of these campaigns is to gain access to accounts/emails or servers where sensitive data is stored. Around 73% of all attacks within the EU are believed to be conducted for espionage purposes, with 16% of attacks conducted by hacktivists. Some of the hacktivism incidents are thought to be a front for nation-state activity.

In contrast to the United States, cybercriminal activity accounts for a low percentage of all malicious activity, with only 7% of intrusions attributed to cybercrime. CERT-EU reports that only a very limited number of cybercrime actors are conducting attacks within the EU, and the majority of that activity comes from ransomware groups. These groups gain access to internal networks, steal sensitive data, and encrypt files then demand payment to prevent the publication of the stolen data and for the keys to decrypt data.

In 2023, CERT-EU identified 55 ransomware operations that were active within the EU, and 906 victims were identified from data leak sites and open sources. It should be noted that not all ransomware attacks are reported and many companies quietly pay the ransom, so the true total could be substantially higher. Many of these attacks appeared to be opportunistic in nature rather than targeted. While there are many different ransomware groups, the most active in the EU were LockBit, Play, and BlackBasta, although in Q4, 2023 there was a large increase in attacks by the 8Base group, with NoEscape also highly active in the second half of the year. Ransomware groups attacked a wide range of sectors, with manufacturing the worst affected with 24% of attacks, followed by legal/professional services (14%), and construction/engineering (12%).

A variety of methods were used to gain access to targeted networks. 104 software products were targeted with these attacks often exploiting vulnerabilities in internet-facing products, involving trojanized software, fake software, and abuse of public repositories used for programming languages. Some of the most significant attacks of the year involved networking products, such Fortinet, Cisco, and Citrix products, as well as password managers such as 1Password or LastPass, content management and collaboration tools such as WordPress and Altassian Confluence, and cloud services. While many attacks used these methods for initial access, by far the most common method was spear phishing for both cybercriminal and nation-state threat actors.

Spear phishing attacks include malicious links to websites where credentials are harvested or malicious attachments. There was a significant increase in spear phishing attacks that used lures related to EU affairs, with it common to include decoy PDF files that were originally internal or publicly available documents related to EU policies, for example, documents relating to the Swedish Presidency of the Council of the European Union,  EU – Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) Summit, and the Working Party of Foreign Relations Counsellors (RELEX). These campaigns were directed at individuals and organizations involved in EU policies, and the emails often impersonated staff members of union entities or the public administration of EU countries to add credibility. Public administration entities were the most targeted, followed by entities in diplomacy, defense, transport, finance, health, energy, and technologies. While spear phishing is usually performed via email, CERT-EU notes some diversification of communications, with attacks also conducted via social media networks, instant messaging services, and SMS messages.

Entities in the EU should implement layered defenses against the most common initial access vectors. An advanced email security solution should be implemented that is capable of signature and behavioral analysis of emailed files, with extensive threat intelligence feeds, and AI/machine learning capabilities. SpamTitan anti-spam software has all of these features and more and will protect your business from all types of email-based attacks. SpamTitan is offered as a cloud-based anti-spam service or can be provided as an anti-spam gateway for on-premises environments. A web filter such as WebTitan will protect against the internet-based component of cyberattacks by blocking access to malicious sites, and security awareness training and phishing simulations should be conducted on the workforce using a solution such as SafeTitan. To protect against unauthorized account access, multi-factor authentication should be implemented and software should be kept up to date with the latest updates and patches applied promptly.

Malware Increasingly Distributed via Emailed PDF Files

by titanadmin | Feb 20, 2024 | Phishing & Email Spam |

There has been a marked increase in email campaigns using malicious PDF files to distribute malware, rather than the typical uses of PDF files for obtaining sensitive information such as login credentials.

Increased security measures implemented by Microsoft have made it harder for cybercriminals to use macros in Office documents in their email campaigns, with PDF files a good alternative. Malicious links can be embedded in PDF files that drive victims to web pages where credentials are harvested. By using PDF files to house the links, they are less likely to be blocked by email security solutions.

Over the past few months, PDF files have been increasingly used to distribute malware. One of the currently active campaigns uses malicious emailed PDF files to infect users with DarkGate malware. DarkGate malware is offered under the malware-as-a-service model and provides cybercriminals with backdoor access to infected devices. In this campaign, emails are sent to targets that contain a PDF attachment that displays a fake image from Microsoft OneDrive that suggests there was a problem connecting which has prevented the content from being displayed. The user is given the option to download the PDF file; however, the downloaded files will install DarkGate malware.

In this campaign, clicking the link does not directly lead to the malware download, instead, the click routes through an ad network, so the final destination cannot be identified by checking the link of the download button. Further, since the ad network uses CAPTCHAs, the threat actors can make sure that the destination URL is not revealed to email security solutions. If the CAPTCHA is passed, the user will be redirected to the malicious URL where they can download the file.  This is often a compressed file that contains a text file and a URL file, with the latter downloading and running JavaScript code which executes a PowerShell command that downloads and executes the malicious payload.

PDF files have been used in many other malware campaigns, including those that distribute the Ursnif banking Trojan and WikiLoader malware. Recent campaigns distributing these malware variants have used parcel delivery lures with PDF file attachments that contain a link that prompts the user to download a fake invoice. Instead of the invoice, a zip file is downloaded that contains a JavaScript file. If executed, the JavaScript file downloads an archive, extracts the contents, and executes the malware payload. Another campaign uses PDF files to install the Agent Tesla remote access trojan using Booking.com-related lures.

Not only do PDF files have a greater chance of evading email security solutions, they are also more trusted by end users than Office file attachments. Security awareness campaigns are often focused on training employees about the risks of phishing, such as clicking links in unsolicited emails and the risks of opening unsolicited office files. Malicious email campaigns using PDF files arouse less suspicion and end users are more likely to be tricked by these campaigns.

It is important for businesses to incorporate PDF files into their security awareness training and phishing simulation campaigns to better prepare employees for this growing threat. With SafeTitan, adding new content in response to the changing tactics, techniques, and procedures of threat actors is a quick and easy process. Get in touch with the TitanHQ team today to find out more about the SafeTitan security awareness training and phishing simulation platform and discover the difference the solution can make to your organization’s security posture.

Bumblebee Malware Returns With a Large-Scale Phishing Campaign

by titanadmin | Feb 18, 2024 | Phishing & Email Spam |

A large-scale phishing campaign has been identified that has already targeted many thousands of organizations in the United States and could be expanded geographically. The purpose of the campaign is to distribute Bumblebee malware, a malware loader that was first identified in 2022 and is thought to be a replacement for the widely used BazarLoader malware loader. Bumblebee malware is used for gaining initial access to networks and has been used in many successful cyberattacks. The malware is rented out to cybercriminals or access to compromised networks is sold to cybercriminal groups such as ransomware gangs. The malware has been linked to several high-profile threat actors and notorious ransomware gangs, including the now-defunct Conti ransomware group.

Over the past four months, Bumblebee malware has not been detected but it has now returned with a massive campaign. A variety of lures are used in phishing emails, which incorporate social engineering techniques to trick the recipients into downloading and executing the malware. For instance, the latest campaign included thousands of emails using the subject Voicemail February, with messages indicating the user had missed a voice call. The emails instructed the recipient to download the recording, the opening of which triggered the infection process. Other emails used in the campaign have used Word documents with malicious macros with the emails spoofing trusted companies, such as the electronics firm Humane. Rather than include the document attached to the email, a OneDrive link was provided in the email from which the document could be downloaded. This was an effort to prevent detection by email security solutions, as OneDrive is a legitimate and trusted service. Previous campaigns have used DocuSign branded emails that trick users into downloading a zipped ISO file from OneDrive.The group is known to hijack email threads to make it appear that the emails are responses to previous conversations with contacts.

Multiple threat actors are believed to rent out the malware, including the initial access brokers who work with ransomware gangs. Bumblebee malware infections are often accompanied by other payloads, including Cobalt Strike, Meterpreter, Sliver, and shellcode, and often lead to ransomware attacks. To combat Bumblebee malware infections, businesses should implement robust defenses against phishing. An advanced email security solution is required with AI and machine learning capabilities that can detect novel phishing attempts. SpamTitan Plus uses a machine learning algorithm that can identify emails that deviate from those typically received by a business, links are rewritten and followed and the destination URL is assessed. All emails are subjected to antivirus scans and suspicious attachments are sent to a Bitdefender-powered sandbox for behavioral analysis.

Security awareness training should be provided to the workforce to improve resilience to phishing attempts by teaching security best practices and how to identify phishing attempts. SafeTitan is a comprehensive security awareness training platform and phishing simulator that is updated with new content regularly in response to changing phishing tactics, including those used in Bumblebee campaigns. It is also recommended to implement multi-factor authentication on accounts, perform daily backups and store them offline, implement next-generation antivirus technology on endpoints, and implement network hierarchy protocols and network segmentation to prevent lateral movement.

Business Microsoft 365 Accounts Attacks Using Greatness Phishing Kit

by titanadmin | Jan 31, 2024 | Phishing & Email Spam |

Phishing has long been the most common way that cybercriminals gain initial access to business networks. A successful attack allows a threat actor to steal credentials and gain a foothold in the network, providing access to sensitive data and giving them the access they need to conduct a range of nefarious actions. Phishers must develop campaigns that are capable of bypassing email security solutions and use lures that are likely to fool end users into disclosing their credentials or opening malicious email attachments. In recent years, the entry barrier for conducting phishing campaigns has been significantly lowered through phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS), which has proven popular with would-be cybercriminals.

Phishing kits are offered that provide everything needed to launch successful phishing campaigns, without having to spend hours setting up the infrastructure, creating convincing emails, and incorporating anti-detection measures to ensure emails land in inboxes. A relatively new phishing kit is proving to be particularly popular. The Greatness phishing kit has been available since mid-2022 and lowers the bar for starting phishing campaigns, requiring a payment of just $120 a month to use the kit. The Greatness phishing kit allows emails to be customized to suit the hacker’s needs and add attachments, links, or QR codes to the emails. The kit makes it easy to generate and send emails and create obfuscated messages that can bypass many cybersecurity solutions and land in inboxes. The kit also supports multi-factor authentication (MFA) bypass by performing a man-in-the-middle attack to steal authentication codes and can be integrated with Telegram bots.

The kit has an attachment and link builder that creates convincing login pages for harvesting Microsoft 365 credentials and even pre-fills the victim’s email address into the login box, only requiring them to enter their password. The kit also adds the targeted company’s logo to the phishing page along with a background image that is extracted from the targeted organization’s M365 login page. As such, the Greatness phishing kit is aimed at individuals looking to target businesses and can be easily purchased through the developer’s Telegram channel. There were several spikes in Greatness phishing kit activity in 2023, with the latest detected in December 2023 and the increased activity has continued into 2024. Phishing kits such as Greatness significantly lower the barrier for entry to cybercrime and make it as easy as possible to start phishing, and the low cost of the kit has made it an attractive option for would-be cybercriminals. This phishing kit is used to target Microsoft 365 users, and the emails can be convincing and are likely to fool many end users.

The key to defending against phishing attacks is to implement layered defenses to ensure that a failure of one defensive measure does not leave the business unprotected. TitanHQ has developed a suite of cybersecurity solutions for businesses and the MSPs that serve them to improve their defenses against phishing, including AI-generated phishing emails and sophisticated phishing kits capable of stealing passwords and MFA codes.

TitanHQ’s PhishTitan provides advanced phishing protection and remediation for Microsoft 365. TitanHQ’s proprietary machine-learning algorithm integrates directly with Microsoft 365 and catches and remediates sophisticated phishing including AI-generated phishing emails, business email compromise, spear phishing, and phishing attacks that bypass MFA. The solution augments rather than replaces EOP and Defender and catches the phishing attempts that those defensive measures often miss.

PhishTitan uses AI and a large language model (LLM) with proprietary threat intelligence currently not found in any other anti-phishing solution on the market, and will scan attachments for malicious links and malware, rewrite URLs, apply banner notifications, and block malicious links. PhishTitna also provides time-of-click protection to combat the weaponization of links after delivery. The solution uses machine learning algorithms to scan the message body to assess email content and identify words, phrasing, and formatting of emails indicating a phishing attempt, and will learn over time and become even more effective.

PhishTitan is suitable for businesses of all types and sizes and has been developed from the ground up to meet the needs of MSPs. The solution can be set up in less than 10 minutes, and MSPs can add new clients in less than 6 minutes and start protecting them from highly sophisticated phishing attacks. For maximum protection, TitanHQ also offers WebTitan DNS filter to protect against web-based attacks, ArcTitan email archiving for security and compliance, EncryptTitan for email encryption, SafeTitan for security awareness training and phishing simulations, and the SpamTitan Suite of email security solutions. All products are available on a no-obligation, 100% free trial and product demonstrations are available on request. For more information on PhishTitan and other TitanHQ solutions, give the TitanHQ team a call today.

Microsoft Teams Used to Push DarkGate Malware

by titanadmin | Jan 30, 2024 | Phishing & Email Spam |

Phishing is most commonly associated with email; however, there are a variety of ways that cybercriminals can make contact with end users and other forms of phishing are becoming much more common. Smishing is the use of SMS messages for phishing which targets users via their smartphones, which tend to have far weaker security controls than laptops and PCs. Voice phishing is also common, where malicious actors trick people into disclosing sensitive information or installing malware over the phone. Phishing can also take place via social media networks and video conferencing platforms such as Microsoft Teams.

A campaign has recently been identified that uses Microsoft Teams group chat requests for phishing. A threat actor appears to be using a compromised account to send Teams group chat invites to thousands of individuals. The compromised User’s Teams account is likely to have been compromised in a phishing, credential stuffing, or brute force attack. This campaign aims to install malware on users’ systems – a malware variant called DarkGate. DarkGate malware was first identified in 2018 and is a remote access Trojan that can install a hidden virtual network computing (hVNC) module to provide remote access to a victim’s device. The malware has keylogging and information-stealing capabilities and can steal cookies and information stored in browsers, Discord tokens, and cryptocurrency wallets. The malware can also download other payloads such as ransomware.

In this campaign, if a user accepts the group chat request, the threat actor uses social engineering techniques to trick them into downloading a file to their device. The user is tricked into thinking that they are downloading a PDF file, but they download an executable file. The file – Navigating Future Changes October 2023.pdf.msi – has a double extension. On Windows systems, which are typically configured to hide known file extensions, the file will be displayed as Navigating Future Changes October 2023.pdf. If the user double-clicks on the file, the malware will be installed and will connect to its command-and-control server, giving the treat actor control over the user’s device.

Microsoft Teams has become a popular target for threat actors for malware distribution. There are around 280 million monthly users, and the default settings allow Microsoft Teams users to receive chat requests from external Microsoft Teams users. While most users will have antivirus software on their devices for detecting malware, DarkGate malware is stealthy and often evades antivirus software. There are several steps that businesses can take to combat these attacks. The most important of which is to disable External Access in Microsoft Teams unless it is absolutely necessary for day-to-day business use. This will ensure that users can only receive chat requests internally, which will greatly reduce risk.

Another important measure is to provide regular security awareness training to the workforce. Employees should be taught cybersecurity basics such as how to recognize a phishing attempt and should be made aware of the latest tactics used by cybercriminals in attacks on employees. Training should be provided continuously, with short training sessions conducted every month. When new phishing techniques are identified, short training modules can be pushed out to employees to make them aware of the threat. With the SafeTitan security awareness training platform this is easy. The platform has a wide range of CBT content, with training modules lasting no more than 10 minutes so they are easy to fit in to workflows.

If you do not currently provide regular security awareness training to your workforce, contact TitanHQ about SafeTitan. Product demonstrations can be arranged on request, and you can test the product for yourself in a free trial.