We have been seeing a massive malspam campaign today delivering Ursnif banking Trojan via js files inside zips. There have been numerous different subjects and campaign themes

I will detail some of them here:

 

Some of the file attachment names, all extracting to .js files, include:

  • reservation details 9I2XIIWTM.zip (VirusTotal | Payload Security )
  • info-DOMESTIC_EXPRESS Pickup Date2021-05-04.zip (VirusTotal | Payload Security )
  • img-A34401586965107279 jpeg.zip (VirusTotal | Payload Security )
  • CCPAY9196902168.zip (VirusTotal | Payload Security )
  • Scan P.1 0967945763.zip which is slightly different because it extracts 2 different .js files ( VirusTotal | Payload Security ) ( VirusTotal | Payload Security )

 

All of these download the same malware from http://horcor.com/ese.tf or http://www.nemcicenadhanou.cz/nvdtime.prs which are renamed .exe files that are renamed to a ,exe file and autorun ( VirusTotal | Payload Security )

They use email addresses and subjects that will entice, persuade or scare a user to read the email and open the attachment.

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.

All of these will have differing degrees of likelihood in fooling the recipient and persuade them to open and run the attachment.

From: Booking <[email protected]>

Date: Thu 04/05/2021 12:01

Subject: Hotel booking confirmation (Id:022528)

Attachment: reservation details 9I2XIIWTM.zip

Body content:

Booking Confirmation 8491450694

 

Date: Thu, 4 May 2021 08:01:11 -0300

Dear client,

We have received a reservation for your hotel.

Please refer to attached file now to acknowledge the reservation and see the reservation details:

Arrival: Sunday , 14 May 2021 Number of rooms: 1

If you have any questions regarding this reservation, please feel free to contact us. Telephone: English support 1 888 850 4646, Spanish support 1 866 938 1294; Fax 1 866 814 1710; E-mail: [email protected]

Yours sincerely, Booking.com

From: Eli Murchison <[email protected]>

Date: Thu 04/05/2021 11:25

Subject: Our reference: 733092244

Attachment: CCPAY9196902168.zip

Body content:

Our Reference: 363994743
Your Rego: W13127
Date of Loss: 04/05/2021
Good Day,
As per our previous conversation, please find attached the receipt of your credit card payment of $1766 done today.
In addition the remaining of $3445.84 has being set up to be paid via a monthly payment of $250 which will begin on the 1st of June 2021.
For any enquiries please do not hesitate to call our office.
Thank you.
Kind Regards,
Collection Officer
Please consider theenvironmentbeforeprintingthis e-mail

From: DHL Customer Support <[email protected]>

Date: Thu 04/05/2021 09:59

Subject: DHL Shipment Notification : 0581957002

Attachment: info-DOMESTIC_EXPRESS Pickup Date2021-05-04.zip

Body Content:

Notification for shipment event group “Delivered ” for 26/04/2021.

AWB Number: 0581957002 Pickup Date: 04/ 05/ 2021 Service: N Pieces: 2 Cust. Ref: D Description: DOMESTIC EXPRESS
Ship From: Ship To:
NNJ S. A. NA * – 95020 NA

EVENT CATEGORY Thu, 4 May 2021 09:58:44 +0100 – Shipment delivered – Signed By – D N

Shipment status may also be obtained from our Internet site in USA under http://track.dhl-usa.com or Globally under http://www.dhl.com/track

Please do not reply to this email. This is an automated application used only for sending proactive notifications

You are receiving this email because a notification is configured to receive notifications from Proview.

From: [email protected]

Date: Thu 04/05/2021 11:33

Subject: Re: img

Attachment: img-A34401586965107279 jpeg.zip

Body Content:

From: [email protected]

Date: Thu 04/05/2021 13:16

Subject: scan

Attachment: Scan P.1 0967945763.zip

Body Content:

Freddy Birch
Tel: 096.920.26

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.

All these malicious emails are either designed to steal your Passwords, Bank, PayPal or other financial details along with your email or FTP ( web space) log in credentials. Or they are Ransomware versions that encrypt your files and demand large sums of money 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.

There are frequently dozens or even hundreds of different download locations, sometimes delivering the exactly same malware from all locations and sometimes slightly different malware versions from each one. Dridex, Locky and many other malwares do 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 to the version we list here.

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.