The never ending stream of  Locky downloaders still continues today with an email with the subject of  Financial documents coming as usual from random companies, names and email addresses  with a semi-random named zip attachment starting with  fin_docs_containing a VBS file

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.

This is very similar to recent Locky malspam where the download is an actual executable file, not an encrypted file needing decoding, although called a txt file. The VBS just renames it to the dll name. Even the VBS file is easily read by a researcher and the level of obfuscation is so low and trivial that I can decode them in my sleep ( I am normally useless at decoding /deobfuscating these files). They have attempted to increase the complexity of the obfuscation today but it is still quite easy to manually decode, although slightly more time consuming than the last couple of week’s attempts

Manual analysis shows a download from one of these locations:

• angoshop.com/kmu6e
• awaelschool.com/l23v5btj
• cheappaintball.net/l34qy
• owkcon.com/51smshd6
• loterotal.net/5kh90

7 November  2016 :  fin_docs_c605c39a.zip : Extracts to: NRV_3O63MI_.vbs   Current Virus total detections:  Payload Security shows downloads  of  a file from  the same locations  which is renamed by the script to qltoUhLp0.dll  ( VirusTotal) C2 are: 188.65.211.181:80  | 185.67.0.102:80 | 195.123.211.229:80   all use  /message.php

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.

One of the  emails looks like:

From: Delbert Mckay <Mckay8375@purrfectsports.com>

Date: Mon 07/11/2016 10:57

Subject: Financial documents

Attachment: fin_docs_c605c39a.zip

Body content:

Hi [redacted]

These financial documents need to be uploaded on the system.

Please let me know if you experience any technical problems. 

Best Wishes,

Delbert Mckay

Screenshot:

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. A very high proportion are Ransomware versions that encrypt your files and demand money ( about £350/$400) 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.

Previous campaigns over the last few weeks have delivered numerous different download sites and malware versions. There are frequently 5 or 6 and even up to 150  download locations on some days, sometimes delivering the exactly same malware from all locations and sometimes slightly different malware versions. Dridex /Locky does 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.

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.

 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.

: