The hidden network: Inside the phishing infrastructure ecosystem powering global cybercrime


Over the past year, Microsoft uncovered a Chinese-language cybercriminal ecosystem, an interconnected network of phishing kit operators, developers, and an illicit marketplace selling tools and infrastructure for large-scale phishing, enabling cybercriminal operations worldwide.

Threat actors purchased and used these tools and infrastructure, including phishing kits and access to compromised or fraudulent Microsoft or Google cloud environments and related credentials, to target organizations across the healthcare, financial services, wholesale distribution, and information technology (IT) sectors in Japan, the United States, Australia, and India. In collaboration with law enforcement agencies and other partners worldwide, Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) facilitated a disruption of the ecosystem’s primary developers and infrastructure.

Read more…
Source:  Microsoft


Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox


Related:

  • Coinminer, DDoS Bot Attack Docker Daemon Ports

    May 6, 2020

    Researchers found an open directory containing malicious files, which was first reported in a series of Twitter posts by MalwareHunterTeam. Analyzing some of the files, we found a malicious cryptocurrency miner and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) bot that targets open Docker daemon ports. The attack starts with the shell script named mxutzh.sh, which scans for open ports (2375, ...

  • DDoS attacks in Q1 2020

    May 6, 2020

    Since the beginning of 2020, due to the COVID-2019 pandemic, life has shifted almost entirely to the Web — people worldwide are now working, studying, shopping, and having fun online like never before. This is reflected in the goals of recent DDoS attacks, with the most targeted resources in Q1 being websites of medical organizations, ...

  • Excel Files with Hidden Sheets Target Users in Italy

    May 5, 2020

    A spam campaign using emails that have Excel file (.xls) attachments (detected by Trend Micro as Trojan.XF.HIDDBOOK.THDBHBO) has been seen circulating and targeting users in Italy and some users in Germany and other countries. The attachment appears blank when opened, but it has a sheet set to “hidden” that attempts to connect to a URL and download a ...

  • Europol: Hacker Group Selling Databases With Millions Of User Credentials Busted In Poland And Switzerland

    May 5, 2020

    Polish and Swiss law enforcement authorities, supported by Europol and Eurojust, dismantled InfinityBlack, a hacking group involved in distributing stolen user credentials, creating and distributing malware and hacking tools, and fraud. On 29 April 2020, the Polish National Police (Policja) searched six locations in five Polish regions and arrested five individuals believed to be members of ...

  • COVID-19: Cloud Threat Landscape

    May 4, 2020

    Unit 42 researchers analyzed 1.2 million newly observed hostnames (NOH) containing keywords related to the COVID-19 pandemic from March 9, 2020 to April 26, 2020 (7 weeks). 86,600+ fully qualified domain names are classified as  “high-risk” or “malicious” (C2, malware, or phishing), spread across various regions , as shown in Figure 1. The United States ...

  • TrickBot Attack Exploits COVID-19 Fears with DocuSign-Themed Ploy

    May 1, 2020

    Threat actors are using people’s interest in the Department of Labor’s Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to spread what appears to be the TrickBot trojan in a new spam campaign that security researchers discovered recently. Recent analysis from spam honeypots set by IBM X-Force discovered actors targeting email recipients with fake messages that claim to ...