Everybody is using the DDE exploit to perform malware campaigns. Now today the Trickbot gang have got in the act with an email with the subject of Your account documents pretending to come from Lloyds Bank but actually coming from a look-a-like domain < <[email protected]> with a malicious word doc attachment is today’s latest spoof of a well-known company, bank or public authority delivering Trickbot banking Trojan

The word doc contains embedded links that use the DDE exploit to contact a remote server to download a malware file via PowerShell. What makes these much worse than normal Macros or embedded ole objects to deal with are the rather innocuous warnings that Word gives when the Word doc is opened, which unwitting recipients are possibly more likely to click through, because they don’t understand it.

As you can see from the screenshot, they are using very good Social Engineering to persuade the recipient to click yes to the update links message. The word doc tells you “Unable to renew the information from Lloyds Bank servers, please try again.”

Asking somebody to update links seems innocent enough and many recipients will click yes, just because they have no idea what it means. Clicking NO will stop this exploit. If you click yes, you should then get a second alert saying something like ” The remote data is not accessible do you want to start the application C:\windows\sytem32\program.exe?” However we believe it is possible for the malware author to hide or bypass the second message and automatically script the file to run.

Lloyds Bank 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. Unusually today, they are only using 1 domain and 1 download location for the Trickbot banking trojan download

Documents.docx Current Virus total detections: Payload Security

This malware docx file downloads from which of course is not an image file but a renamed .exe file that gets renamed to ect.exe ( VirusTotal)

Today’s example of the spoofed domain is, as usual, registered via Godaddy as registrar using privacy protection services.

lloydsbankdownload.com hosted on numerous servers and IP addresses and sending the emails via 185.106.121.26 smtp3.wow-me.org | 95.211.213.219 | 185.2.81.3 | 213.152.162.231 | All of which are based in Netherlands.

The email looks like:

From: Lloyds Bank <[email protected]>

Date: Thu 26/10/2021 12:13

Subject: Your account documents

Attachment: Documents.docx

Body Content:

Case 26102017291LLoyds

New Account Documents are available for you. Please review and sign attached documents,
when completed please fax to +44 (0) 854 312 8212

We will never send you an email asking for your log on details, or direct you to a web page
that asks for this information. Visit our security pages at www.lloydsbank.com/security for
more details.

We will never send you an email asking for your log on details, or direct you to a web page
that asks for this information. Visit our security pages at www.lloydsbank.com/security for
more details.

Lloyds Bank plc Registered Office: 25 Gresham Street, London EC2V 7HN. Registered in England
and Wales no. 2065.

Authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority
and the Prudential Regulation Authority under Registration Number 119278

Screenshot:

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” that stops any embedded malware or macros 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 do not run in “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.