Cofense Email Security

New Credential Phish Targets Employees with Salary Increase Scam

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

image showing a phishing email

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.

illustrating a phishing website

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.

phishing trends and statistics

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

75% of threats reported to the Cofense Phishing Defense Center are credential phish. Protect the keys to your kingdom—condition end users to be resilient to credential harvesting attacks with Cofense PhishMeTM.

Over 91% of credential harvesting attacks bypassed secure email gateways. Remove the blind spot—get visibility of attacks with Cofense ReporterTM. Quickly turn user-reported emails into actionable intelligence with Cofense TriageTM. Reduce exposure time by rapidly quarantining threats with Cofense VisionTM.

Attackers do their research. Every SaaS platform you use is an opportunity for attackers to exploit it. Understand what SaaS applications are configured for your domains—do YOUR research with Cofense CloudSeekerTM.

Thanks to our unique perspective, no one knows more about providing phishing awareness training and REAL phishing threats than CofenseTM. To understand them better, read the 2019 Phishing Threat & Malware Review.

All third-party trademarks referenced by Cofense whether in logo form, name form or product form, or otherwise, remain the property of their respective holders, and use of these trademarks in no way indicates any relationship between Cofense and the holders of the trademarks. Any observations contained in this blog regarding circumvention of end point protections are based on observations at a point in time based on a specific set of system configurations. Subsequent updates or different configurations may be effective at stopping these or similar threats.

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