Threat actors are increasingly improving their tactics to make suspicious emails look like legitimate email notifications to potential victims, deploying techniques that impersonate internally sent emails from executive team members. While this technique is not new, the adoption of AI has enabled threat actors to improve their campaign templates and construct emails tailored to their recipients. Additionally, threat actors are incorporating multiple techniques within the same email to improve the overall narrative further.
In this blog, we will discuss a recent campaign observed using third-party email delivery infrastructure to send out over a million financial fraud scam emails that displayed multiple indicators consistent with the use of generative AI during email template creation. The threat actor impersonated CEOs of multiple target companies, attempting to convince accounts payable departments of the same companies to process an Automated Clearing House (ACH) payment of nearly $50,000. To add legitimacy, the actor included a forwarded email thread (and a fabricated invoice) between the impersonated CEO and ServiceNow (which was also being impersonated).
Read more…
Source: Microsoft News
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- Fileless GandCrab As Seen by SandBlast Agent
December 17, 2018
January 2018 saw the debut of the GandCrab ransomware, a well-known malware that is distributed on the Dark Web which targets mainly Scandinavian and English-speaking countries. In addition, the GandCrab Affiliate Program offers low skilled threat actors the opportunity to run their own ransomware campaigns. Delivered mainly through email spam engines, affiliates are also provided with advice and ...
- Cybercriminals Use Malicious Memes that Communicate with Malware
December 14, 2018
Steganography, or the method used to conceal a malicious payload inside an image to evade security solutions, has long been used by cybercriminals to spread malware and perform other malicious operations. We recently discovered malicious actors using this technique on memes. The malware authors have posted two tweets featuring malicious memes on October 25 and 26 ...
- Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Open to IoT Attacks
December 14, 2018
Flaws could allow an attacker to stop or start a home charging station, or even change the current in order to start a fire. Given that creating proof-of-concept (PoC) cyberattacks for the Internet of Things (IoT) is essentially like shooting fish in a barrel these days, perhaps it’s not exactly surprising that a new niche category ...
- LCG Kit: Sophisticated builder for Malicious Microsoft Office Documents
December 13, 2018
Proofpoint researchers discovered “LCG Kit,” a weaponized document builder service, in March 2018. Since we began tracking LCG Kit, we have observed it using the Microsoft Equation Editor CVE-2017-11882 , which has been used used in limited email campaigns. ...
- Tildeb: Analyzing the 18-year-old Implant from the Shadow Brokers’ Leak
December 13, 2018
On April 14, 2017, The Shadow Brokers (TSB) leaked a bevy of hacking tools named “Lost in Translation.” This leak is notorious for having multiple zero-day remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities targeting critical protocols such as Server Message Block (SMB) and Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and applications like collaboration and web server-based software. The exploit toolkit includes EternalBlue, ...
- Supply Chain Security: Managing a Complex Risk Profile
December 12, 2018
Experts sound off on how companies can work with their third-party suppliers and partners to secure the end-to-end supply chain. NYC — From Delta Airlines to Best Buy, a number of big-name companies were involved this year in data breaches – but even though their names made headlines, the actual security incidents occurred due to flaws in third-party partners. Across ...