This example is today’s latest spoof or imitation of a well-known company, bank or public authority delivering Trickbot banking Trojan. The email with the subject of “ALERT – BB Wire: Extra Due Diligence* RE: Incoming Wire Name and Account Mismatch ” pretends to come from Scotia Bank but actually comes from “[email protected]” or “[email protected]” both of which are look-a-like, typo-squatted or other domains that can easily be misidentified, mistaken or confused with the genuine site. These have a malicious office file attachment. Today they are using XLSM Excel spreadsheet files. Again these are targeted at North American recipients, primarily Canadian. We haven’t seen any European targets or lures in this present Trickbot campaign.
I am seeing lots of strange behaviour running this macro XLS file in Anyrun. It isn’t showing the usual full binary download locations. The macros & powershell scripts are a nightmare to try to manually decode/decrypt. These don’t seem to like W7 64 bit but run well on W10. They are using https today for the binary downloads not the typical http.
Scotia Bank 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 the genuine Company, Bank, Government Department or message sending service. Normally there is only one newly registered domain that imitates a well known Company, Government Department, Bank or other organisation that can easily be confused with the genuine body or website in some way. These are hosted on & send the emails from 3 or 4 different servers. Some days however we do see dozens or even hundreds of fake domains. Today we can only see 2 servers for each domain today. There are 2 look-a-like domains today
Today’s example of the spoofed domains are, as usual, registered via Godaddy as registrar. Because of new GDPR rules we cannot easily find the registrants name or any further details.
- scotiabanksec.com hosted on & sending emails via 213.152.168.131 | 85.17.80.2
- scotiabank-ses.com hosted on & sending emails via 95.211.143.198 | 95.211.169.199
You can now submit suspicious sites, emails and files via our Submissions system
Email Details
From: Penny Tam <[email protected]>
Date: ALERT – BB Wire: Extra Due Diligence* RE: Incoming Wire Name and Account Mismatch
Subject: IALERT – BB Wire: Extra Due Diligence* RE: Incoming Wire Name and Account Mismatch
Attachment: 190122S6909500.xlsm
Body content:
Hello,
We received an incoming wire in CAD $18,324.67 from NetSystems TECHNOLOGY UK. The sender has provided an incorrect CAD account number, please see details attached.
Can you kindly advise if the funds needs to be credited to your CAD account?
Many thanks.
Penny
Wire ID : 190122S6909500
Sending Customer Name: NetSystems TECHNOLOGY UK
Beneficiary Transit Number: 1020
Beneficiary Account Number: 742475 ???
Currency and Amount: CAD 18,324.67
Payment Details:
Penny Tam | Corporate Cash Management Officer | ScotiaBank
Plaza 44 King Street | West Toronto | Ontario M5H 1H1
T: 416-982-6132 | F: 416-944-5891 | Toll Free 1-844-228-3458
Screenshot:
Fake Scotia Bank email
Malware Details
Fake Scotia Bank excel spreadsheet
190122S6909500.xlsm Current Virus total detections | Hybrid Analysis | Anyrun W7 64 bit|Anyrun W10 64 bit | Anyrun W7 32 bit |
This malware xlsm file downloads from https://banditbars.com/ad.mini which is a renamed .exe file VirusTotal | Cape Sandbox Gtag Ser 0205US
The alternate Download location is https://stream-market.co.uk/ad.mini
The folder for the files & configs is: C:\Users\[User]\AppData\Roaming\cleanmem
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:
Main object- “190122S6909500.xlsm”
sha256 0d2529ac1ce211978b2155d5337c208fd80553910eadcdbcda6d58dba1d7f3b4
sha1 7d25b442012a332c80aa50dac2d767e827c3cf38
md5 e7310a66559d2d8f53c68007937cd4a5
Dropped executable file
sha256 C:\Users\admin\AppData\Local\Temp\tmp3170.exe 2db3d3a913bccc3a9f2e4a6529840bfe943b244974db19e7905a1368d9d155b7
DNS requests
domain icanhazip.com
domain banditbars.com
domain 18.73.249.89.zen.spamhaus.org
domain 18.73.249.89.cbl.abuseat.org
https://stream-market.co.uk/ad.mini
https://banditbars.com/ad.mini
Connections
ip 203.143.86.234
ip 216.17.92.138
ip 31.131.24.140
ip 96.36.253.146
ip 24.247.181.125
ip 147.75.89.25
ip 185.68.93.30
HTTP/HTTPS requests
url http://ctldl.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/v3/static/trustedr/en/authrootstl.cab?71cddd9148b622c5
url http://ctldl.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/v3/static/trustedr/en/pinrulesstl.cab?986b7c10856ac7b0
url http://ctldl.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/v3/static/trustedr/en/pinrulesstl.cab?16f570c0217bf5f6
url http://icanhazip.com/
url http://96.36.253.146:8082/ser0205us/DESKTOP-JGLLJLD_W10016299.D23E0A2BB396BA10135723948AF5760D/81/
url http://96.36.253.146:8082/ser0205us/DESKTOP-JGLLJLD_W10016299.D23E0A2BB396BA10135723948AF5760D/83/
url http://185.68.93.30/radiance.png
213.152.168.131
85.17.80.2
95.211.143.198
95.211.169.199