Back today with even more Mailchimp abuse & attempted malware spreading. On Thursday 22 February we saw 2 malware campaigns [1] [2] abusing the Mailchimp network. On 26 February 2018 the malware campaign used Nixon Hire as the bait and they are still continuing again today using financier.com as the bait or lure. Again there is a bit of a change in the emails.
Today’s are much more simple and bland than before They have changed the payload today and are delivering Ursnif /gozi banking trojan instead of Gootkit banking trojan.
We still have no idea how the victim companies’ details or login credentials to the mailchimp network are being stolen or compromised.
This next email has the subject of Invoice from Teddington Grange Management Ltd coming Cordie Fennell <[email protected]>; on behalf of; Cordie Fennell <[email protected]>
The link in the email body is to
Invoice Documents.zip : Extracts to: Invoice Documents ( which is a windows shortcut file) Current Virus total detections: Hybrid Analysis | Anyrun Beta |
This malware file downloads from using bitsadmin VirusTotal |Anyrun Beta | Hybrid Analysis |
About 1 month ago we saw a malware campaign using Mailchimp to distribute Gootkit banking trojan. Today’s campaign has changed slightly and although the initial emails are coming via the Mailchimp system, The droppers and however the payloads are coming from other sites which are probably/almost certainly compromised.
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: Cordie Fennell <[email protected]>; on behalf of; Cordie Fennell <[email protected]>
Date: Thu 01/03/2018 09:43
Subject: Invoice from Teddington Grange Management Ltd
Body content:
Hello,
Invoice to My Online Security Keep yourself safe online,
Please discover placed documents as requested.
Regards
Cordie Fennell
Screenshot:
mailchimp email delivering malware
Email Headers:
| IP | Hostname | City | Region | Country | Organisation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 205.201.129.48 | mail48.wdc01.mcdlv.net | Atlanta | Georgia | US | AS14782 The Rocket Science Group, LLC |
Received: from mail48.wdc01.mcdlv.net ([205.201.129.48]:49313)
by knight.knighthosting.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.89_1)
(envelope-from <bounce-mc.us8_28709643.1718813-accounts=victimsdomain.com@mail48.wdc01.mcdlv.net>)
id 1erKjm-0000oO-Qg
for [email protected]; Thu, 01 Mar 2018 09:42:55 +0000
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; s=k1; d=mail48.wdc01.mcdlv.net;
h=Subject:From:Reply-To:To:Date:Message-ID:List-ID:List-Unsubscribe:Sender:
Content-Type:MIME-Version;
[email protected];
bh=8ntZT5LNITxK+Z2IrEvbJifV3C8DetvF71gWIdPah30=;
b=urrKkta6wullCq3G47LB0ARTjDueAQjk7UCfI44ATGQ1E06OdCtd9arwj5cjsxWCTOwAhQ8yCFq/
UpYLGTrumbM5LNulgVkSw9tmy4PmYhVh1v74c2bI0BcVplzDPiWZNL5F+eeg9Jgnv1spB87O4TA+
VjTrWvdWTaUJeoMRES8=
Received: from (127.0.0.1) by mail48.wdc01.mcdlv.net id hiv5hu2akec8 for <[email protected]>; Thu, 1 Mar 2018 09:42:38 +0000 (envelope-from <bounce-mc.us8_28709643.1718813-accounts=victimsdomain.com@mail48.wdc01.mcdlv.net>)
Subject: =?utf-8?Q?Invoice=C2=A0=20=C2=A0from=C2=A0=C2=A0Teddington=20Grange=20Management=20Ltd?=
From: =?utf-8?Q?Cordie=20Fennell?= <[email protected]>
Reply-To: =?utf-8?Q?Cordie=20Fennell?= <[email protected]>
To: =?utf-8?Q?My=20Online=20Security=20Keep=20yourself=20safe=20online?= <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2018 09:42:38 +0000
Message-ID: <9e951be049dbead482bf68d7d.3f8ac39b23.20180301094138.849e363983.4311869d@mail48.wdc01.mcdlv.net>
X-Mailer: MailChimp Mailer – **CID849e3639833f8ac39b23**
X-Campaign: mailchimp9e951be049dbead482bf68d7d.849e363983
X-campaignid: mailchimp9e951be049dbead482bf68d7d.849e363983
X-Report-Abuse: Please report abuse for this campaign here: http://www.mailchimp.com/abuse/abuse.phtml?u=9e951be049dbead482bf68d7d&id=849e363983&e=3f8ac39b23
X-MC-User: 9e951be049dbead482bf68d7d
Feedback-ID: 28709643:28709643.1718813:us8:mc
List-ID: 9e951be049dbead482bf68d7dmc list <9e951be049dbead482bf68d7d.336873.list-id.mcsv.net>
X-Accounttype: pd
List-Unsubscribe: <https://webs.us8.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=9e951be049dbead482bf68d7d&id=44b20ffa28&e=3f8ac39b23&c=849e363983>, <mailto:unsubscribe-mc.us8_9e951be049dbead482bf68d7d.849e363983-3f8ac39b23@mailin.mcsv.net?subject=unsubscribe>
Sender: “Cordie Fennell” <[email protected]>
x-mcda: FALSE
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=”_———-=_MCPart_1233318949″
MIME-Version: 1.0
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.
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.