Trickbot is back targeting the UK again today after a short break.
This example is an email containing the subject of “June’s Invoices / Documents ” pretending to come from Companies House eBilling but actually coming from a look-a-like or typo-squatted domain “[email protected]” with a malicious word doc attachment is today’s latest spoof of a well-known company, bank or public authority delivering Trickbot banking Trojan

You can now submit suspicious sites, emails and files via our Submissions system

Email Details
From: Companies House eBilling <[email protected]>
Date: Wed 11/07/2021 12:55
Subject: June’s Invoices / Documents
Attachment: 489237490.doc

Body Content:

Companies House eBilling
This message has been generated in response to the company complaint submitted to Companies House eBilling service.

We are aware that some of the charges that you may have been expecting on June’s invoice are missing. A full investigation is taking place internally to discover the cause of this error. It is expected that these charges will be shown on your next invoice.

We have attached invoices/documents related to your account, please check attached files for more information.
Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience that this has caused you
Note: reference to company may also include Limited Liability Partnership(s).

Thank you for using the Companies House WebFiling service.
Service Desk tel +44 (0)303 8097 476 or email [email protected]
Note: This email was sent from a notification-only email address which cannot accept incoming email. Please do not reply directly to this message

If you’re unsure an email is from Companies House:
• Do not reply to it or click on any links
• Report the suspicious email to Companies House

All content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0, except where otherwise stated

Screenshot:

Fake Companies House ebilling June’s Invoices email

Companies House has not 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.

What has happened is that the criminals sending these have registered various domains that look like genuine Company, Bank, Government or message sending services. Normally there is only newly registered domain that imitate Companies House, HMRC, another Government department, a Bank, file hosting service or a message sending service that can easily be confused with the genuine organisation in some way, that are hosted on & sending emails from 3 different servers..

Some days however we do see dozens or even hundreds of fake domains.
Today’s example of the spoofed domain is, as usual, registered via Godaddy as registrar. Because of new GDPR rules we cannot easily find the registrants name or any further details.

  • ebilling-companieshouse-gov.uk hosted on & sending emails via 191.101.26.81 Edmond Oklahoma US AS20454 SECURED SERVERS LLC| 5.79.84.104 NL AS60781 LeaseWeb Netherlands B.V. |185.90.136.239 South Holland NL AS50673 Serverius Holding B.V.|

 

Malware Details

Fake Companies House ebilling June’s Invoices word doc

489237490.doc Current Virus total detections | Hybrid Analysis | Anyrun |
This malware doc file downloads from http://www.jamesbrownpharma.com/lewl.suck which is a renamed .exe file ( VirusTotal) Gtag Ser 0711
The alternate Download location is http://positivechangesok.com/lewl.suck
The folder containing the malware and configs has changed again today to:
C:\Users\User Name\AppData\Roaming\msnet\

All modern versions of word and other office programs, that is 2010, 2013, 2016 and 365, should open all Microsoft office documents that is Word docs, Excel spreadsheet files and PowerPoint etc that are downloaded from the web or received in an email automatically in “protected view” that stops any embedded malware, macros and DDE “exploit /Feature” and embedded ole objects from being displayed and running.

Make sure protected view is set in all office programs to protect you and your company from these sorts of attacks and do not over ride it to edit the document. If the protected mode bar appears when opening the document DO NOT follow the advice they give to enable macros or enable editing to see the content. The document will have a warning message, but you will be safe.

Be aware that there are a lot of other dodgy word docs spreading that WILL infect you with no action from you, if you are still using an out dated or vulnerable version of word. This is a good reason to update your office programs to a recent version and stop using office 2003 and 2007. Many of us have continued to use older versions of word and other office programs, because they are convenient, have the functions and settings we are used to and have never seen a need to update to the latest super-duper version.

The risks in using older version are now seriously outweighing the convenience, benefits and cost of keeping an old version going.

What Can Be Infected By This

At this time, these malicious macros only infect windows computers. They do not affect a Mac, IPhone, IPad, Blackberry, Windows phone or Android phone.

The malicious word or excel file can open on any device with an office program installed, and potentially the macro will run on Windows or Mac or any other device with Microsoft Office installed. BUT the downloaded malware that the macro tries to download is windows specific, so will not harm, install or infect any other computer except a windows computer. You will not be infected if you do not have macros enabled in Excel or Word. These Macros, embedded Oles or DDE do not run in “Office Online” Open Office, Libre Office, Word Perfect or any other office program that can read Word or Excel files.

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. Also please read our post about word macro malware and how to avoid being infected by them

I strongly urge you to update your office software to the latest version and stop putting yourself at risk, using old out of date software.

IOC:
Secure.doc
MD5: 9d0ac938740896433f9c9fdf37c317e2
SHA-1: 9a07aa495368a6d94530633e7e84e69146c2458a
Download URLs
http://www.jamesbrownpharma.com/lewl.suck 69.195.124.82
http://positivechangesok.com/lewl.suck 173.254.28.104
MD5: d98badb54f293a925359e74dad2e05cd
SHA1: 6383c82b072fed7dc09dae67266c52f3824e6b44
Email from: [email protected]
ebilling-companieshouse-gov.uk
5.79.84.104
191.101.26.81
185.90.136.239