Continuing with the never ending series of malware downloaders is an email with the subject of DHL Tracking Number for shipment 97 93745 186 ( random numbers) pretending to come from DHL Corporation with a link in email body to download a file that will deliver what looks like ransomware corebot
Update: after further analysis by sandboxes and other researchers, some of whom first though it might be jaff ransomware, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I still have no idea exactly what it is but Joesandbox shows a lot of detail with connections to social media shopping & search engine sites. I am now guessing on some sort of clickfraud Trojan.
Further Update: Thanks to Antelox we now have an unpacked version of the malware which is being detected as a corebot / zbot variant ( VirusTotal) which is more inline with the activity report from Joesandbox, although Microsoft describe this as TrojanProxy: Win32/Malynfits.A
And after lots of different tweets and conversations found this from Brad ( MalwareTraffic) confirming corebot with a nice writeup by him
I had a whole series of these yesterday morning with the link in the email body going to http://dhldeliverymailservice.com/documentdir/9793745186 ( IP: 89.223.26.202 ) which gave me a 404 then and still gives a 404 now, so I didn’t bother to post about it.
A contact based in USA sent me another link in the version he received ( 0430 UTC today) which is currently live & delivering malware ( I don’t have a copy of the email he received, which might be different to my versions) http://dhlmailsystem.com/documentdir/777126146374729609489374827 (IP: 89.223.27.247)
Both domains are registered using privacy protection with Namecheap as registrar and hosted on simplecloud.ru
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.
Remember many email clients, especially on a mobile phone or tablet, only show the Name in the From: and not the bit in <domain.com >. That is why these scams and phishes work so well.
This is another one of the files that unless you have “show known file extensions enabled“, can easily be mistaken for a genuine DOC / PDF / JPG or other common 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.
invoice-0063827410370260857-000001870346531780753154078347.pdf.js Current Virus total detections: Payload Security shows a download of various files from the same server one being auvrq.exe ( VirusTotal) ( payload Security) . I am not 100% positive what it does but looks like some sort of ransomware Joesandbox
One of the emails looks like:
From: DHL Corporation <[email protected]>
Date: Fri 26/05/2017 06:19
Subject: DHL Tracking Number for shipment 97 93745 186
Attachment: link in email body
Body content:
Dear Customer
We have attempted to deliver your item
The delivery attempt failed because nobody was present at the shipping
address, so this notification has been automatically sent.
You may arrange re-delivery by visiting the nearest DHL office with the
printed shipping invoice mentioned below.
If the package is not scheduled for delivery or picked up within 96 hours,
it will be returned to the sender.
TRACKING Number: 97 93745 186
Expected Deliver Date: 26.05.2017
Class: Package services
Service(s): Delivery Confirmation
Status: eNotification sent
Download detailed reference about the purchase.
http://dhldeliverymailservice.com/documentdir/9793745186
To check on the delivery status of our mailing or arrange re-delivery
please visit our site.
2017 DHL Corp
*** This is an automatically generated mail, please do not reply ***
Screenshot:
Update: the newer working version did have a slightly different email and the sender doesn’t even pretend to be from DHL but gives the impression it is from some company you have purchased a product from, complete with false company name and address.
From: Sandra A. Small [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, May 26, 2017 7:32 PM
To: Philip [redacted] Subject: [SPAM] DHL Tracking Number 81 36113 058 , recipient: [redacted]
Dear Customer, today 5/27/2017
We have attempted to deliver your parcel The delivery attempt failed because nobody was present at the shipping address, so this notification has been automatically sent to [redacted]. You may arrange re-delivery by visiting the nearest DHL office with the printed shipping invoice mentioned below. If the package is not scheduled for delivery or picked up within 36 hours, it will be returned to the sender. TRACKING Number: 19 84332 118
Expected Deliver Date: 5/27/2017
Class: Package services Service(s): Delivery Confirmation Status: eNotification sent Download detailed reference about the purchase. To check on the delivery status of our mailing or arrange re-delivery please visit our site. 2017 DHL Corporation *** This is an automatically generated message, please do not reply ***
Mailing address: 3504 Rivendell DriveAkron, OH 44305 ABN 33896207238
Bettendorf’s
DHL Team
Email reference id: [#sjlzoDQIjtglELLsepeqYZldEJUhAAmQ#]
The link in email body( in the working versions) goes to http://dhlmailsystem.com/documentdir/777126146374729609489374827 where you get slightly different behaviour depending on what browser you use to visit
If you use Internet Explorer or Google Chrome, you get a zip file containing a .js file. Using Firefox you get the .js file itself . In both cases you first see a page like this with a message saying preparing download with a countdown marker. When it reaches 0 the message becomes a link saying “click here to download if not started automatically” and the malware file is delivered. This is a very good imitation of a genuine DHL page & will fool lots of recipients.
All these malicious emails are either designed to steal your Passwords, Bank, PayPal or other financial details along with your email or FTP ( web space) log in credentials. Or they are Ransomware versions that encrypt your files and demand large sums of money to recover the files.
All the alleged senders, amounts, reference numbers, Bank codes, companies, names of employees, employee positions, email addresses and phone numbers mentioned in the emails are all random. 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.
There are frequently dozens or even hundreds of different download locations, sometimes delivering the exactly same malware from all locations and sometimes slightly different malware versions from each one. Dridex, Locky and many other malwares do update at frequent intervals during the day, sometimes as quickly as every hour, so you might get a different version of these nasty Ransomware or Banking password stealer Trojans to the version we list here.
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. Many 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, or an invoice or order confirmation from some company, you can easily see if it is a picture or document & not a malicious program.
If you see .JS or .EXE or .COM or .PIF or .SCR or .HTA .vbs, .wsf , .jse .jar 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.