Proofpoint
Cisco Ironport
By Milo Salvia, Cofense Phishing Defense CenterTM
The Cofense Phishing Defense Center (PDC) has observed a new phishing campaign that aims to harvest Office365 (O365) credentials by preying on employees who are expecting salary increases.
The threat actors use a basic spoofing technique to trick employees into thinking that their company’s HR department has shared a salary increase spread sheet. Here’s how it works:
Email Body
Figure 1: Email Body
The threat actor attempts to make the email appear to come from the target company by manipulating the “from” field in the headers. In particular, the threat actor changes the part of the from field that dictates the “nickname” displayed in the mail client to make it appear as if it originated within the company.
The email body is simple: recipients see the company name in bold at the top of the page. Greeted by only their first names, they are informed that “As already announced, The Years Wage increase will start in November 2019 and will be paid out for the first time in December, with recalculation as of November.” Recipients are then presented with what appears to be a hosted Excel document called “salary-increase-sheet-November-2019.xls.”
It is not uncommon, of course, for companies to increase salaries throughout the year. As a result, it wouldn’t be uncommon for an email like this to appear in an employee’s mailbox. Human curiosity compels users to click the embedded link.
The idea is to make recipients believe they are being linked to a document hosted on SharePoint. However, they are being linked to an external website hosted on hxxps://salary365[.]web[.]app/#/auth-pass-form/. One can assume from the context of this malicious URL that it was specifically chosen and hosted for this phishing attempt.
Figure 2: Phishing Pages
Once users click on the link, they are presented with a common imitation of the Microsoft Office365 login page. The recipient email address is appended to the end of the URL that automatically populates the email box within the form, leaving just the password field blank to be submitted by the recipient. This adds a sense of legitimacy to the campaign, allowing the recipient to believe this comes from their own company.
HOW COFENSE CAN HELP
Cofense Resources
Cofense PhishMeTM offers a simulation template, “Salary Increase,” to educate users on the phishing tactic described in today’s blog.
Cofense IntelligenceTM: ATR ID 31510
Cofense TriageTM: YARA rule PM_Intel_CredPhish_31510
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