An email with the subject of Shipment delivery problem #0000701821 [ random numbered] pretending to come from FedEx International Next Flight with a zip attachment is another one from the current bot runs which try to download various Trojans and password stealers especially banking credential stealers, which may include cridex, dridex, dyreza and various Zbots, cryptolocker, ransomware and loads of other malware on your computer. They use email addresses and subjects that will entice a user to read the email and open the attachment.

A very high proportion are being targeted at small and medium size businesses, with the hope of getting a better response than they do from consumers.

The content of the email says :

Dear Customer,

We could not deliver your parcel.

You can review complete details of your order in the find attached.

Regards,

Johnny Cantrell,

Sr. Operation Agent.

Or

Dear Customer,

This is to confirm that one or more of your parcels has been shipped.

Shipment Label is attached to email.

Regards,

Mitchell Bartlett,

Sr. Station Agent.

Or

Dear Customer,

Courier was unable to deliver the parcel to you.

Shipment Label is attached to email.

Thanks and best regards,

Glenn Gill,

FedEx Station Manager.

Other subjects in this set of malicious malspam include:

  • Problem with parcel shipping, ID:00000953180
  • Problems with item delivery, n.0000823595
  • Unable to deliver your item, #00724372

Other senders pretend to be:

  • FedEx Standard Overnight
  • FedEx International MailService
  • FedEx Ground
  • FedEx 2Day A.M

These malicious attachments normally have a password stealing component, with the aim of stealing your bank, PayPal or other financial details along with your email or FTP ( web space) log in credentials. Many of them are also designed to specifically steal your Facebook and other social network log in details.

All the alleged senders, companies, names of employees and phone numbers mentioned in the emails are all innocent and are just picked at random. All the shipping, parcel, delivery numbers etc.are random but the number generally matches the attachment number. Some of these companies will exist and some won’t.

Don’t try to respond by phone or email, all you will do is end up with an innocent person or company who have had their details spoofed and picked at random from a long list that the bad guys have previously found. The bad guys choose companies, Government departments and organisations with subjects that are designed to entice you or alarm you into blindly opening the attachment or clicking the link in the email to see what is happening.

Please read our How to protect yourselves page for simple, sensible advice on how to avoid being infected by this sort of socially engineered malware.

2 October 2015 : Delivery_Notification_0000701821.zip: Extracts to: Delivery_Notification_0000701821.doc.js Current Virus total detections: which should be contacting these 3 sites alejandrosanchezvejar.com | icandymobile.com | laurenszedlak.com but doesn’t appear to be downloading any malware or actually contacting them ( Payload Security Hybrid analysis)

3 October 2015 : Delivery_Notification_00000953180.zip: Extracts to: Delivery_Notification_00000953180.doc.js Current Virus total detections: which contacts these 3 sites clicks-tec.com | www.dominaeweb.com | laurenszedlak.com and downloads these files 74404411.exe ( VirusTotal) and e13dbe35c0786[1].gif (VirusTotal) ( Payload Security Hybrid analysis) MALWR Note: the automatic tools seem to have problems analysing these javascript files and aren’t getting the payload in many cases.

4 October 2015 : Label_00000468516.zip: Extracts to: Label_00000468516.doc.js Current Virus total detections: which contacts these 3 sites clsolviagens.com.br | alejandronaranjo.com | laurenszedlak.com and downloads these files 87761567.exe ( VirusTotal) and f87aa2fbb4[1].gif (VirusTotal) MALWR

2nd Version 4 October 2015 : FedEx_ID_00724372.zip: Extracts to: FedEx_ID_00724372.doc.js Current Virus total detections: which contacts these 3 sites www.dominaeweb.com | clicks-tec.com | cfdi.facturafacil.net and downloads these files 42060174.exe ( VirusTotal) and 4ea03c0c[1].gif (VirusTotal) MALWR

The interesting thing to note is that the 87761567.exe has a stolen digital signature from CJSC Computing Forces, which at least in Internet Explorer, Smart Filter warns about an invalid digital signature but does not block the file from being downloaded or run.

However the malware file is originally downloaded as a .gif although it is an executable file. It does contain the damaged/invalid/stolen digital signature but smart screen does not alert on the signature inside a gif only on a .exe file. The fake gif that is downloaded is converted by the .js file to a .exe file, so if a user happens to see a gif being downloaded, they think it is a legitimate picture.

If I download the .exe from MALWR I get the smart screen warning. If I download direct via a browser form the infected site as a gif, I do not get any smart screen warning. This is a risk for a user and something Microsoft needs to look at with smart screen.

This is another one of the spoofed icon files that unless you have “show known file extensions enabled“, will look like a DOC file instead of the .exe/JS file it really is, so making it much more likely for you to accidentally open it and be infected.

Be very careful with email attachments. All of these emails use Social engineering tricks to persuade you to open the attachments that come with the email. Whether it is a message saying “look at this picture of me I took last night” and it appears to come from a friend or is more targeted at somebody who regularly is likely to receive PDF attachments or Word .doc attachments or any other common file that you use every day.

The basic rule is NEVER open any attachment to an email, unless you are expecting it. Now that is very easy to say but quite hard to put into practice, because we all get emails with files attached to them. Our friends and family love to send us pictures of them doing silly things, or even cute pictures of the children or pets.

Never just blindly click on the file in your email program. Always save the file to your downloads folder, so you can check it first. Most ( if not all) malicious files that are attached to emails will have a faked extension. That is the 3 letters at the end of the file name.

Unfortunately windows by default hides the file extensions so you need to Set your folder options to “show known file types. Then when you unzip the zip file that is supposed to contain the pictures of “Sally’s dog catching a ball” or a report in word document format that work has supposedly sent you to finish working on at the weekend, you can easily see if it is a picture or document & not a malicious program. If you see .EXE or .COM or .PIF or .SCR at the end of the file name DO NOT click on it or try to open it, it will infect you.

While the malicious program is inside the zip file, it cannot harm you or automatically run. When it is just sitting unzipped in your downloads folder it won’t infect you, provided you don’t click it to run it. Just delete the zip and any extracted file and everything will be OK.

You can always run a scan with your antivirus to be sure. There are some zip files that can be configured by the bad guys to automatically run the malware file when you double click the zip to extract the file. If you right click any suspicious zip file received, and select extract here or extract to folder ( after saving the zip to a folder on the computer) that risk is virtually eliminated.

Never attempt to open a zip directly from your email, that is a guaranteed way to get infected. The best way is to just delete the unexpected zip and not risk any infection.