Scammers Aiming Straight for the Money
Posted by Laureli Mallek Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:44:00 GMT
Targeted spear phishing campaigns are using money to lure victims. Brian Krebs blogged this week about a two part spear-phishing attack targeting small and medium sized businesses. The attack focuses on gaining access to circumnavigating two-part authentication used in banking security.
The scam begins with an email containing specific information about the user, their business, and the bank. This email requests that users click to view or download an attached object, which installs a keylogger, according to iDefense, and a browser helper object enabling attackers to modify webpages in real time. When a user with an infected computer attempts to log into their bank account, Krebs writes that a “message is inserted into the body of the bank’s actual Web page.” The interstitial message appears to originate from the bank since it is displayed within the body of the bank’s website, and requests that the user wait 15-30 minutes before logging on. The attackers use this time, after they have intercepted the user’s authentication information, to empty the associated bank accounts.
Quoting Matt Richard, of iDefense, “If a bad guy has malicious code on a customer’s machine, no matter what you do, he’s going to have some way to get in to the customer’s account. The best you’ll be able to do is try to stop the money transfers.”
As something of a coup de grace, Krebs writes “Before the Trojan download, the attacker attempts to get the user to install their bogus root CA certificate with the ‘VeriSign Trust Network’ name.” Combining malware with a new root certificate makes it easier for the attacker to re-infect a computer in the future. Sunbelt has also spotted fake banking certificates in their blog.
In a similar attack noted by McAfee’s Avert Labs last month, a number of spear phishing emails have been playing on an ubiquitous fear: the Tax Court. So many of these emails spoofing petition requests have been received that the US Tax Court website provides a clear warning that “[t]he Tax Court is not disseminating any e-mail notice to anyone who currently has a case before this Court.”
Kevin McGhee writes, “The scammers do their homework when it comes to spear phishing. Instead of pumping out millions of emails to anybody and everybody, spear phishers send out their scams only to people they know will be susceptible to the scam. In this case a top executive–rather than the average employee–is much more likely to be involved in a court case of this nature.”
