We continue to be plagued daily by fake financial themed emails containing java adwind or Java Jacksbot attachments. I have previously mentioned many of these HERE. We have been seeing these sort of emails almost every day and there was nothing much to update. Today’s has a slightly different subject and email content to previous ones.
we are seeing 2 slightly different delivery methods today both spoofing Orient Exchange Co. (L.L.C.)
Make Note: Java Adwind / Java Jacksbot are both very dangerous remote access backdoor Trojans, that have cross OS capabilities and can potentially run and infect any computer or operating system including windows, Apple Mac, Android and Linux. It however can only be active or infect you if you have Sun / Oracle Java installed. Along with most security professionals, I strongly urge you to uninstall java and not use it, unless you have a pressing need for it.
The majority of domestic ( home ) users and small businesses have no need for Java on their computers. This Article from a couple of years ago explains why you should remove it. If you cannot remove it then it must be kept up to date and be extremely careful with what you download or open.
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.
None of the companies mentioned in the body of the email been hacked or had their email or other servers compromised. They are not sending the emails to you. They are just innocent victims in exactly the same way as every recipient of these emails.
Version 1 ( the attached zip) : BENFICIARY REMITTANCE CONFIRMATION.jar (274kb) is using a 1 week old version of java adwind Trojan Current Virus total detections: Payload Security
Version 2 ( the dropbox ) contains 2 identical java.jar files BENEFICIARY COMPLAINT FORM FILED AGAINST YOUR BRANCH.jar and CONFIRMATION AND REFRENCE OF THIS TRANSACTION NEEDED.jar ( 323kb) VirusTotal | Payload Security
The 1st email looks like:
From: [email protected]
Date: Tue 07/03/2017 09:34
Subject: BENEFICIARY REMITTANCE CONFIRMATION
Attachment: BENFICIARY REMITTANCE CONFIRMATION.zip
Body content:
Dear agent,
Please kindly Confirm the status of this transaction.
The remitter demands for the payment record, because the beneficiary has
filed a complaint against your remitting outlet.
So Please kindly check the attached complaint form and reference of
transaction if it was paid, Please report to us with receipt of
transaction to clear your name.
Thanking You,
Orient Exchange Co. (L.L.C.)
Mohd. & Obaid Al Mulla Building, Shop No. 4,
Street No 18, Community 119
Next To Twin Towers, Deira,
Dubai, U.A.E.
Tel: [009714] 2522599
Fax: [009714] 2522527
Website: www.orientexchange.com
Email Headers:
IP Hostname City Region Country Organisation 162.217.144.41 cpan4.webline-servers.com Nanuet New York US AS29757 Webline Services Inc ::1 Local IP Received: from cpan4.webline-servers.com ([162.217.144.41]:56693)
by knight.knighthosting.co.uk with esmtps (TLSv1.2:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:256)
(Exim 4.88)
(envelope-from <[email protected]>)
id 1clBYw-0003n8-EV
for [email protected]; Tue, 07 Mar 2017 09:37:47 +0000
Received: from [::1] (port=48522 helo=mirageaquapark-hurghada.com)
by cpan4.webline-servers.com with esmtpa (Exim 4.88)
(envelope-from <[email protected]>)
id 1clBVD-003lgU-Rz; Tue, 07 Mar 2017 04:33:55 -0500
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
boundary=”=_605209cb49a88a7dbfbda1d5f4d9d0b6″
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2017 10:33:51 +0100
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: BENEFICIARY REMITTANCE CONFIRMATION
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
X-Sender: [email protected]
User-Agent: Roundcube Webmail/1.2.3
X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report
X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname – cpan4.webline-servers.com
X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain – thespykiller.co.uk
X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID – [47 12] / [47 12] X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain – bkam.ma
X-Get-Message-Sender-Via: cpan4.webline-servers.com: authenticated_id: [email protected]
X-Authenticated-Sender: cpan4.webline-servers.com: [email protected]
Note: Only the final IP address outside of your network in the Received: fields can be trusted as others can be spoofed
The second version is slightly more devious and has a genuine PDF attachment that contains a link to dropbox to download the zip file that contains 2 different copies of the java jar files.
From: [email protected] 1 <[email protected]>
Date: Tue 07/03/2017 03:34
Subject: BENEFICIARY REMITTANCE CONFIRMATION
Attachment: COMPLAIN OF UNPAID REMITTANCE.pdf
Body content:
Dear agent,
Please kindly Confim the status of this transaction. The remitter demanding for the payment record, because the beneficiary has filed a complaint agaisnt your remitting outlet. So Please kindly check the attached complaint form and refrence of transaction if it was paid, Please furnish us with receipt of transaction to clear your name. Thanking You, Orient Exchange Co. (L.L.C.) Mohd. & Obaid Al Mulla Building, Shop No. 4, Street No 18, Community 119 Next To Twin Towers, Deira, Dubai, U.A.E. Tel: [009714] 2522599 Fax: [009714] 2522527
E-mail : [email protected]Website: www.orientexchange.com
Email Headers:
| IP | Hostname | City | Region | Country | Organisation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 70.32.90.96 | websitedesignbase.com | Culver City | California | US | AS31815 Media Temple, Inc. |
| 83.243.41.200 | DE | AS34549 meerfarbig GmbH & Co. KG |
Received: from [70.32.90.96] (port=33298 helo=pp5v-kxj7.accessdomain.com)
by knight.knighthosting.co.uk with esmtps (TLSv1.2:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:256)
(Exim 4.88)
(envelope-from <[email protected]>)
id 1clD2i-0002FV-JX
for [email protected]; Tue, 07 Mar 2017 11:12:37 +0000
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=love101.org
; s=default; h=Message-ID:To:From:Content-Type:Subject:Date:MIME-Version:
Sender:Reply-To:Cc:Content-Transfer-Encoding:Content-ID:Content-Description:
Resent-Date:Resent-From:Resent-Sender:Resent-To:Resent-Cc:Resent-Message-ID:
In-Reply-To:References:List-Id:List-Help:List-Unsubscribe:List-Subscribe:
List-Post:List-Owner:List-Archive;
bh=ifgzk1aMZyOocX4danU+RekkWj8/Kj31i3darj3N9n8=; b=aNRiI+EIPVIhEtnCiU3BZtwDDA
j4B4ve2WaMF+XVSQ2xMkV0Mb4umUpYGFka9gGc128KA15hsIX3j+To2fP/tqE6bIkpxY+tQCbSoIf
Bsx5+tZhnLWEW1p4V8FAXdYcKySk8tLQqaKaa7iyYOoMjnxd1dkC7Q0eUdhtyvEueG9PjoaQjKHgD
Yl1kJNyWejEB5JRKpB78pZNYEbRrO/2NnJLNcFa20fgsyiZHWgiU8hAauchdOe3u4vHqO9GDxltLB
jARVQDhCWkwFReWe+Uc6/yWgelaWboDn12lLQAIc5cwfwP6hVoEqiiP+qpsBPeoMAaywgax6mMPgx
mDzEfvuw==;
Received: from [83.243.41.200] (port=51718 helo=VPS2DAY-1020UNV)
by pp5v-kxj7.accessdomain.com with esmtpa (Exim 4.88)
(envelope-from <[email protected]>)
id 1cl6Ad-0004Pr-Mf
for [email protected]; Mon, 06 Mar 2017 19:52:21 -0800
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Unsent: 1
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2017 03:33:33 +0000
Subject: BENFICIARY REMITTANCE CONFIRMATION.
X-Priority: 1
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
boundary=”—–_chilkat_d3d_de7a_3e6c1b6c.bbc10bbc_.MIX”
From: “[email protected] 1” <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Message-ID: <CHILKAT-MID-12cd58a3-cb2c-6cfd-61db-4a03c27d707c@VPS2DAY-1020UNV>
X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report
X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname – pp5v-kxj7.accessdomain.com
X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain – thespykiller.co.uk
X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID – [47 12] / [47 12] X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain – love101.org
X-Get-Message-Sender-Via: pp5v-kxj7.accessdomain.com: authenticated_id: [email protected]
X-Authenticated-Sender: pp5v-kxj7.accessdomain.com: [email protected]
X-Source:
X-Source-Args:
X-Source-Dir:
These malicious attachments 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.
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 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.