By Tonia Dudley
It’s no surprise threat actors continue to leverage new tactics to get recipients to interact with their content. Cofense Managed Phishing Defense Center (PDC) actioned a campaign reported by several customers’ well-conditioned users, which was then analyzed by our Cofense Intelligence team. We’ve seen a few of these campaigns in the past several weeks; as long as this tactic yields success, we can expect it to be leveraged to make it to the inbox.
As we look at the email in Figure 1, you see that there isn’t anything complex about the email. The subject, “Supreme Court: Contract Agreement,” however, may cause the recipient to further open the attachment.
Figure 1 – Initial email
As the recipient opens the attachment, they will see the standard calendar invite as seen in Figure 2.
Figure 2 – Calendar invite
If the recipient is still curious enough to click the link embedded in the meeting notice or as the threat actor instructs – copy the link below to read message – they are taken to the login page as shown in Figure 3. When you look closer at the URL in the meeting invite, you’ll see one of the most interesting pieces of these campaigns. It used the URL like hxxp://0xc1a9fd67/Court, you may notice there is no “.com” or anything there because when typed into a browser the URL actually is interpreted as hxxp://193[.]169[.]253[.]103/Court. It’s a clever technique that may be part of why it bypasses so many SEGs. It looks like a malformed URL so may be ignored even though it is a correctly, if unusually, formatted URL.
Figure 3 – Landing page
Figure 4 – Credential stealing login page
Once the landing page has opened, there are several email options listed to proceed to the document obfuscated in the background. This is a typical tactic used when trying to obtain credentials to boost the likelihood of recipient response in order to see the document hidden in the background. Once they have selected an email client, we see in Figure 4 the actual login page with the document image still showing.
When our Cofense Intelligence analyst dug further into this phishing email, they were able to identify the URL being used to exfiltrate the credentials listed in the IOC table below. This URL has been associated with the phishing-as-a-service outfit BulletProftLink. Cofense Intelligence customers can dig deeper into this threat featured in a recent Strategic Analysis. Contact us to learn more about this and other threats that can dramatically and negatively impact your data, productivity and profitability.
Indicators of Compromise | IP |
hxxp://0xc1a9fd67/Court | 193[.]169[.]253[.]103 |
hxxps://ses-smtp[.]com/email-list/onedrive25/finish.php | 104[.]21[.]16[.]61 |
hxxp://0xc1a9fd67/Supremecourt | 193[.]169[.]253[.]103 |
hxxp://193[.]169[.]253[.]103/Court/ | 193[.]169[.]253[.]103 |
hxxp://193[.]169[.]253[.]103/Supremecourt | 193[.]169[.]253[.]103 |
hxxps://ibmbucket8004[.]s3[.]jp-osa[.]cloud-object-storage[.]appdomain[.]cloud/barflies/index.html | 163[.]68[.]118[.]49 |
hxxps://ibmq90[.]s3[.]jp-osa[.]cloud-object-storage[.]appdomain[.]cloud/codfisheries/index.html | 163[.]68[.]118[.]49 |
hxxps://ibmyl016[.]s3[.]Ca-tor[.]cloud-object-storage[.]appdomain[.]cloud/mauritian/index.html | 163[.]68[.]118[.]49 |
hxxps://loginbuk130[.]s3[.]ca-tor[.]cloud-object-storage[.]appdomain[.]cloud/leveraged/index.html | 163[.]68[.]118[.]49 |