Domain Fronting, Phishing Attacks, and What CISOs Need to Know
December 13, 2018 by Aaron Riley in Threat IntelligenceCISO Summary Cofense IntelligenceTM is seeing continued use of a cyber-attack technique known as domain fronting. It’s yet another way hackers conceal their malicious activity, in this case using work-arounds to evade security controls and gain access to command-and-control (C2) infrastructure (scroll down for a technical explanation). Cozy Bear, the Russian threat actors, used similar tactics when they hacked the Democratic National Committee in 2016. Today, businesses are dealing with phishing and malware attacks that domain fronting enables. While Google and Amazon have taken measures in their CDNs to curtail this trend, we have seen an uptick in C2 infrastructure...
TV-License Phishing Scam Tricks UK Users Into Giving Personal Information
December 5, 2018 by Milo Salvia in Threat IntelligenceCofense Intelligence™ recently observed a new phishing scam making the rounds in the United Kingdom. It poses as the TV licensing authority better known as the British Broadcasting Corporation. The premise behind the scam is to trick the user into believing that he or she is breaking the law by not owning a valid license to receive TV, a criminal offense in the UK with a maximum penalty of a £1000 fine plus any legal costs incurred during prosecution.
2018: A Reverse-Course for Ransomware
December 5, 2018 by Cofense in Threat IntelligenceBy Mollie MacDougall The overall number of ransomware campaigns and active families has declined precipitously in 2018 as compared to last year, almost certainly due to multiple deterrents and a better alternative for profit-minded hackers. This reverse-course in ransomware trends follows years of sustained growth in the number of ransomware families and unique campaigns. Still, ransomware attacks make headlines and will likely continue into next year.
Mature Your Anti-Phishing Program to Reflect Active Threats
November 28, 2018 by Zach Lewis in Internet Security AwarenessAt CofenseTM we often hear comments from customers like, “My anti-phishing program has been running for years, email reporting rates have increased, and overall my users are better prepared. How can I continue to address and lower my risk?”
Bah HumBUG: 5 Recent Holiday Phishing Samples You Need to Watch Out For
November 21, 2018 by Aaron Riley in Threat IntelligenceAlong with more online shopping, correspondence, and travel, the holiday season sees an increase in phishing operators eager to capitalize on a more-active attack surface. With Thanksgiving tomorrow, Cofense Intelligence and the Cofense Phishing Defense Center have seen a bombardment of Thanksgiving-themed phishing lures this week. Threat actors use this inundation of emails to their advantage—hoping to trick anyone looking for a good deal or eager to partake in the season’s merriment.
Major US Financial Institutions Imitated in Advanced Geodo/Emotet Phishing Lures that Appear More Authentic by Containing ProofPoint URL Wrapped Links
November 19, 2018 by Cofense in PhishingThreat IntelligenceBy Darrel Rendell, Mollie MacDougall, and Max Gannon Cofense IntelligenceTM has observed Geodo (also known as Emotet) malware campaigns that are effectively spoofing major US financial institutions in part by including legitimate URLs wrapped in Proofpoint’s (PFPT) TAP URL Defense wrapping service. This adds an air of legitimacy to the casual observer, designed to increase the chances of malware infection. Figures 1 and 2 provide examples of the template and URL wrapping. Cofense Intelligence assesses the improved phishing templates are likely based upon data pilfered with a recently updated scraper module to spoof US financial institutions so effectively. Figure 1:...
Phishing Emails with .COM Extensions Are Hitting Finance Departments
November 15, 2018 by Aaron Riley in Threat IntelligenceCofense IntelligenceTM has seen a substantial uptick in the use of .com extensions in phishing emails that target financial service departments. In October alone, Cofense Intelligence analyzed 132 unique samples with the .com extension, compared to only 34 samples analyzed in all nine months preceding. Four different malware families were utilized. The .com file extension is used for text files with executable byte code. Both DOS (Disk Operating System) and Microsoft NT kernel-based operating systems allow execution of .com files for backwards compatibility reasons. The .com style byte code is the same across all PE32 binaries (.exe, .dll, .scr, etc.)...
They stopped a phishing attack in 10 minutes. It used to take days.
November 7, 2018 by John Fitzgerald in Cyber Incident ResponseDon’t you love a feel-good story? Me too. Especially in an industry where the headlines tend to be scary. Recently, a CofenseTM customer—a large financial services company—stopped a phishing attack in 10 minutes using Cofense TriageTM. That’s a very cool story, but as they say, wait, there’s more.
October may be over – but phishing attacks never stop. Here’s how to make security awareness successful all year round.
November 1, 2018 by Tonia Dudley in Internet Security AwarenessPart 4 of a 4-part series in support of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. You can read part 3 here. As October comes to a close, so too does National Cybersecurity Awareness month. But not so fast – Security Awareness isn’t just about October. It’s all year long and it never stops, it’s ever evolving. I developed this four-part blog series during National Cybersecurity Awareness Month to provide key industry insights and proven methodologies for building and enhancing your security awareness program. We started in week 1 with building a program strategy, followed up by discussing program content in week 2....
Re: The Zombie Phish
October 31, 2018 by Cofense in Malware AnalysisPhishing Defense CenterThreat IntelligenceBy: Lucas Ashbaugh, Nick Guarino, Max Gannon Out of nowhere, someone responds to an email conversation that wrapped up months ago. It’s a real conversation that actually happened. Maybe it’s about a meeting, a job opportunity, or a reply to that problem you had over a year ago; this email is highly relevant to you. But something is off, the topic of the email is months out of date and now there is a weird error message. This is a devious tactic, reviving an email conversation long dead – it’s the Zombie Phish. Not Your Average Phish The Cofense™ Phishing...