A new entry to the Trickbot malspam hitting the UK is this example of an email containing the subject of “Secure Documents ” pretending to come from Fidelity but actually coming from a look-a-like or typo-squatted domain secure@fidelitydocuments.com with a malicious word doc attachment is today’s latest spoof of a well-known company, bank or public authority delivering Trickbot banking Trojan
You can now submit suspicious sites, emails and files via our Submissions system
Email Details
From: Fidelity <secure@fidelitydocuments.com>
Date: Wed 20/12/2021 16:11
Subject: Secure Documents
Attachment: SecureDocuments.doc
Body Content:
Confidential DocumentsThis documents has been prepared by Fidelity Investments US. This document shall not constiture an underwriting commitment, an offer of financing, an offer to sell, or the solicitation of an offer to buy anything. This email was sent from a notification-only email address which cannot accept incoming email. Please do not reply directly to this message.
For security purposes this documents were locked with a password, to unlock/view your documents, follow the instructions below
1. Look for an attachment (SecureDocuments.doc) ( typically at the top or bottom; location varies by email service).
2. Your unlock password is: 212f94NSDjs4121BcR.
3. Enter the password when prompted.Please check attached documents for more information.
The submission number is id: is9201ks-291dsm28sa-f39e21as
Please quote this number in any communications with Barclays.Note: Attached documents are encrypted with a unique Private Key.
Disclaimer: This email and any attachments are confidential and for the sole use of the recipients. If you have received this email in error please notify the sender.
Email Security Powered by Fidelity Investments US IBE. Copyright 2002-2017 Fidelity Investments USA. All rights reserved.
Fidelity has not been hacked or had their email or other servers compromised. They are not sending the emails to you. They are just innocent victims in exactly the same way as every recipient of these emails.
What has happened is that the criminals sending these have registered various domains that look like genuine Company, Bank, Government or message sending services. Normally there are between 2 and 4 newly registered domains that imitate Companies House, HMRC, another Government department, a Bank or a message sending service that can easily be confused with the genuine organisation in some way. Some days however we do see dozens or even hundreds of fake domains.
Today’s example of the spoofed domain is, as usual, registered via Godaddy as registrar using privacy protection services.
fidelitydocuments.com hosted on numerous servers and IP addresses and sending the emails via 89.39.106.129 | 185.207.207.214 | 89.207.131.143 | 134.19.190.4 | All of which are based in Netherlands.
Malware Details
Of course there is no encrypted private key needed to open the word doc. That is just a simple social engineering trick to persuade you to enable editing, content and macros in order to infect you and steal your money.
I have absolutely no idea what Barclays has to do with this particular scam. I can only assume the criminals have used a standard template for the email and forgotten to change the bank name in the email body.
SecureDocuments.doc Current Virus total detections | Hybrid Analysis | Anyrun Beta |
This malware doc file downloads from http://valuesrevealed.com/trlhpdr.png which of course is not an image file but a renamed .exe file that gets renamed to iejcjr.exe ( VirusTotal)
An alternative download location is http://37.230.113.199/image.png
All modern versions of word and other office programs, that is 2010, 2013, 2016 and 365, should open all Microsoft office documents that is Word docs, Excel spreadsheet files and PowerPoint etc that are downloaded from the web or received in an email automatically in “protected view” (https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/What-is-Protected-View-d6f09ac7-e6b9-4495-8e43-2bbcdbcb6653) that stops any embedded malware, macros and this DDE “exploit /Feature” from being displayed and running.
Make sure protected view is set in all office programs to protect you and your company from these sorts of attacks and do not over ride it to edit the document. If the protected mode bar appears when opening the document DO NOT follow the advice they give to enable macros or enable editing to see the content. The document will have a warning message, but you will be safe.
Be aware that there are a lot of other dodgy word docs spreading that WILL infect you with no action from you, if you are still using an out dated or vulnerable version of word. This is a good reason to update your office programs to a recent version and stop using office 2003 and 2007. Many of us have continued to use older versions of word and other office programs, because they are convenient, have the functions and settings we are used to and have never seen a need to update to the latest super-duper version.
The risks in using older version are now seriously outweighing the convenience, benefits and cost of keeping an old version going.
What Can Be Infected By This
At this time, these malicious macros only infect windows computers. They do not affect a Mac, IPhone, IPad, Blackberry, Windows phone or Android phone.
The malicious word or excel file can open on any device with an office program installed, and potentially the macro will run on Windows or Mac or any other device with Microsoft Office installed. BUT the downloaded malware that the macro tries to download is windows specific, so will not harm, install or infect any other computer except a windows computer. You will not be infected if you do not have macros enabled in Excel or Word. These Macros, embedded Oles or DDE do not run in “Office Online” (https://products.office.com/en-gb/office-online/documents-spreadsheets-presentations-office-online) Open Office, Libre Office, Word Perfect or any other office program that can read Word or Excel files.
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. Also please read our post about word macro malware and how to avoid being infected by them
I strongly urge you to update your office software to the latest version and stop putting yourself at risk, using old out of date software.
