This example is an email containing the subject of “Incoming high value CHAPS payments” pretending to come from HSBC but actually coming from “Olivia.Brown@hsbcemail.net” which is a look-a-like,  typo-squatted or other domain that can easily be misidentified, mistaken or confused with the genuine site,  with a malicious word doc attachment  is today’s latest spoof of a well-known company, bank or public authority delivering Trickbot banking Trojan

There is something different about the network connections being shown in the Anyrun report today. It looks like Trickbot might have updated with new modules  and injects.

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

Email Details

From: HSBC <Olivia.Brown@hsbcemail.net>

Date: Thu 04/10/2018 12:37

Subject: Incoming high value CHAPS payments

Attachment: Incoming_CHAPS_Form.doc

Body content:

Good Morning ,

We received 2 high value CHAPS payments requests into the branch today.

Please complete and sign the attached documents and return for processing.
We require this information before we can release the payments to your account.

Thank you,

Olivia Brown BA (Hons) Cert (RBCB)
Business Banking and Wealth Management
HSBC BANK PLC HBEU
18 North Street, Leatherhead, Surrey KT22 7AR. South Region.
___________________________________________________________

Phone 08455928172
Email Olivia.Brown@hsbcemail.net

************************************************************
HSBC Bank plc
Registered Office: 8 Canada Square, London E14 5HQ
Registered in England – Number 14259
Authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the
Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority
************************************************************

This E-mail is confidential

It may also be legally privileged. If you are not the addressee you may not copy, forward, disclose or use any part of it. If you have received this message in error, please delete it and all copies from your system and notify the sender immediately by return E-mail.

Internet communications cannot be guaranteed to be timely secure, error or virus-free. The sender does not accept liability for any errors or omissions.

Screenshot:

Fake HSBC Incoming high value CHAPS payments email

HSBC  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 one 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 4 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.

• hsbcemail.net hosted on & sending emails via  5.79.78.25| 185.117.74.115 |5.79.76.219| 95.211.170.213|

Malware Details

Fake HSBC word doc

Incoming_CHAPS_Form.doc   Current Virus total detections | Hybrid Analysis | Anyrun |

This malware doc file downloads  from http://dustdevilsbaseball.com/good.ifelt which is a renamed .exe file  VirusTotal | Gtag Ser 1004

The alternate Download location is  http://ultimatetvl.com/good.ifelt

The folder for the files & configs is: C:\Users\[User]\AppData\Roaming\AMNI

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.

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:

Incoming_CHAPS_Form.doc
MD5: 19dcfceeb4f95f0e26922dd861cdf1ac
SHA-1: 66cb2420117636c95aa57171e01a498329e3d9c7
Download URLs
http://dustdevilsbaseball.com/good.ifelt   66.119.220.136
http://ultimatetvl.com/good.ifelt     72.52.255.138
MD5: b514496d4ce3febd84644c4d78b73a28
SHA1: 4aa46d7c4943a7241a9c0058c6f04eada51ba11c

Email from: Olivia.Brown@hsbcemail.net
5.79.78.25
185.117.74.115
5.79.76.219
95.211.170.213