I haven’t seen any examples of this Resume malware for quite a while now, so when this popped up in my inbox the morning, it looked interesting enough to investigate a bit. This is a continuation from these 2 previous posts about malware using  resumes or job applications as the lure. [1] [2] They have changed behaviour somewhat since that post was written and it is time to update the details. ( I have only received 1 so far today, so I cannot determine if the sender will be random names as previously or whether they will all appear to come from Rachel Amir). As you can see from the email headers, these pass all authentication checks, so stand quite a good chance of being delivered to a recipient.

What is absolutely shocking here is the web address the word doc downloads from  http://89.248.169.136/bigmac.jpg   is exactly the same as reported on 8th October 2107. More than 1 month ago & still live and spewing out malware

Today’s version appears to be delivering Smoke Loader /Sharik trojan which is a downloader for other malware.

An email with the subject of Website Job Application  coming from Rachel Amir <Brinton@thiruni.com> ( probably random names)  with a malicious word doc  attachment  delivers Smoke loader/ sharik trojan.

They are using email addresses and subjects that will scare, shock, persuade or entice a user to read the email and open the attachment. These are generally targeted at small or medium sized businesses, small charities or organisations who might not have enterprise level protections against this sort of malware delivery method. In today’s current jobs climate, it is extremely common to get resumes or job applications out of the blue. These are just generic enough and just about believable so that a busy, hardworking HR department or General Office dogsbody in a small organisation could be tempted to look at the word doc to see if the details matched the company, before replying.

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.

The email looks like:

From: Rachel Amir <Brinton@thiruni.com>

Date: Fri 10/11/2017 01:00

Subject: Website Job Application

Attachment: resume.doc

Body content:

Good evening
I visited your website yesterday..
I’m currently looking for employment either part time or as a intern to get experience in the field.
Please review my Resume and let me know what you think.

Sincerely,

—
Rachel Amir

Screenshot:

resume.doc       Current Virus total detections: Payload Security | JoeSecurity | AnyRun beta

Now they have continued with the previous behaviour of using BITS (bitsadmin.exe) to download the file instead of PowerShell. They also are also now using “autoclose” in the macro so it doesn’t run until word doc has been closed, so avoiding any obvious signs of infiltration.

This malware downloads from http://89.248.169.136/bigmac.jpg  which of course it not an image file but a renamed .exe   ASDlkoa.exe ( VirusTotal) ( Payload Security)

The malware IP 89.248.169.136 is “owned” by quasinetworks.com ( used to be called Ecatel) who have a somewhat debatable reputation when it comes to dealing with abuse reports  [1]

This word doc looks like this:

Email Headers:

Received: from ip131.ip-142-44-146.net ([142.44.146.131]:53644 helo=mta131.thiruni.com)
by knight.knighthosting.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.89)
(envelope-from <Brinton@thiruni.com>)
id 1eCxqt-0005aQ-Lo
for victim@victim-domain.co.uk; Fri, 10 Nov 2017 01:11:24 +0000
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed/relaxed; s=bulk; d=thiruni.com;
h=Date:Subject:From:To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Message-ID; i=Brinton@thiruni.com;
bh=ua7Qt/TBLhRWzOCq7ln6t5urHms=;
b=LEU/cgfqwsd+otrYo8mJo+IV2fyo4K1aiCzEKYajPuTKfIF0U+tFDt3vIZ2JyiuAHWBJntDloBI0
y39/63R4G1u0T9Cir05gPvihKPJli+9/1Erc50QHahBThufXjLACQfF/UZGMHnYx4Qo4Wa/1gnKN
WFWU4UOwZo0y+zBcl4Y=
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; q=dns; s=bulk; d=thiruni.com;
b=QeTrMsebxwcFijZWIfW6ufFupGYy28E1GPc/4fygTrqGkL1UZMX/9Yiv+194Akze8RiTLQob8t4D
/vrQfsxNxvSIrzcAjFlqPjZp/DcRfbMus0EsAWDYBPGUdoDbVk8m5375LpIAKpU3hgVRR1S7kMhZ
Wmq2cg018lz2bu0VZLI=;
Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2017 01:59:50 +0100
Subject: Website Job Application
From: “Rachel Amir” <Brinton@thiruni.com>
To: victim@victim-domain.co.uk
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
boundary=”–_com.android.email_18866592105814″
Message-ID: <y78tafi-4g0rws-68@thiruni.com>
Errors-To: <bouncechecker@yahoo.com>

All the alleged senders, companies, names of employees, phone numbers, amounts, reference numbers etc. mentioned in the emails are all innocent and are just picked at 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 other 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.

Modern versions of Microsoft office, that is Office 2010, 2013, 2016 and Office 365 should be automatically set to higher security to protect you.

By default protected view is enabled and  macros are disabled, UNLESS you or your company have enabled them.  If protected view mode is turned off and macros are enabled then opening this malicious word document will infect you, and simply previewing it in  windows explorer or your email client might well be enough to infect you. Definitely DO NOT follow the advice they give to enable macros or enable editing to see the content.

Most of these malicious word documents either appear to be totally blank or look something like these images when opened in protected view mode, which should be the default in Office 2010, 2013, 2016  and 365.  Some versions pretend to have a digital RSA key and say you need to enable editing and Macros to see the content.  Do NOT enable Macros or editing under any circumstances. 

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

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. It might be a simple message saying “look at this picture of me I took last night” that appears to come from a friend. It might be a scare ware message that will make you open the attachment to see what you are accused of doing. Frequently it is more targeted at somebody ( small companies etc.) who regularly receive PDF attachments or Word .doc attachments or any other common file that you use every day, for example an invoice addressed to sales@victimcompany.com.

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. Many of us routinely get Word, Excel or PowerPoint attachments in the course of work or from companies that we already have a relationship with.

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. A lot of 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”, an invoice or receipt from some company for a product or service  or receive a Word doc or Excel file report 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 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.

With these malformed infected word, excel and other office documents that normally contain a vba macro virus, the vital thing is do not open any office document direct from your email client or the web. Always save the document to a safe location on your computer, normally your downloads folder or your documents folder and scan it with your antivirus. Many Antiviruses do not natively detect vba  macro-viruses in real time protection and you need to enable document or office protection in the settings. Do not rely on your Anti-Virus to immediately detect the malware or malicious content.    DO NOT enable editing mode or enable macros  

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 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 until you are 100% sure that it is a safe document. If the protected mode bar appears when opening the document DO NOT enable editing mode or enable macros the document will look blank or have a warning message, but will be safe.

Be aware that there are a lot of 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 starting to outweigh the convenience, benefits and cost of keeping an old version going.

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.