We see lots of phishing attempts for email credentials. This one is slightly different than many others and much more involved and complicated. It pretends to be a message from IT support to update webmail to use Office 365 / Outlook web access

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.

The email looks like:

From: IT Support <[email protected]>

Date: Tue 28/03/2021 13:05

Subject: Important message from IT Sector

Attachment: Outlook 360.pdf

Body Content:

Dear User,

Take note of this significant update that our new webmail has been improved with a new messaging system from Outlook Web Access which also include faster usage on email, shared calendar, web-documents and the new 2017 anti-spam version.

Please check your attachment for your secure letter in PDF.

Regards,

IT Support

This message and accompanying documents are covered by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510-2521, and contain information intended for the specified individual(s) only. This information is confidential. If you are not the intended recipient or an agent responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you are at this moment notified that you have received this document in error and that any review, dissemination, copying or the taking of any action based on the contents of this information is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail, and delete the original message.

Screenshot:

This email has a genuine PDF attachment.

If you follow the link inside the pdf you see a webpage looking like this: http://radioclassicafm.com.br/lr/barracuda/barracuda/index.html

After you input your email address and password, you get told incorrect details and forwarded to an almost identical looking page where you can put it in again.

Then you get sent to an imitation of the Google Verification page where they ask for either your phone number or alternative email address. I am sure the phisher must be a bit confused. Why would anybody verify a Microsoft Office 365 Account with Google. Microsoft have their own Verification system.

Then you get a success page

We all get very blasé about phishing and think we know so much that we will never fall for a phishing attempt. Don’t assume that all attempts are obvious. Watch for any site that invites you to enter ANY personal or financial information. It might be an email that says “you have won a prize” or “sign up to this website for discounts, prizes and special offers”

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.

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. Or whether it is a straight forward attempt, like this one, to steal your personal, bank, credit card or email and social networking log in details.

Be very careful when unzipping them and make sure you have “show known file extensions enabled“, And then look carefully at the unzipped file. If it says .EXE then it is a problem and should not be run or opened.