With added text by Threat Researcher Nart Villeneuve 

Whether considered advanced persistent threats (APTs) or malware-based espionage attacks, successful and long-term compromises of high-value organizations and enterprises worldwide by a consistent set of campaigns cannot be ignored. Because “noisier” campaigns are becoming increasingly well-known within the security community, new and smaller campaigns are beginning to emerge.

This research paper documents the operations of a campaign, which was able to compromise the following types of organizations:

• government ministries
• technology companies
• media outlets
• academic research institutions
• nongovernmental agencies

The distribution method of this campaign involves spear-phishing emails that contain a malicious attachment exploiting a Microsoft Office vulnerability (CVE-2012-0158).

During our investigation of the C&C servers associated with this campaign we discovered archives that contained the PHP source code the attackers used for the C&C server and the C code they used to generate the malware used in attacks.

While determining the intent and identity of the attackers remains difficult, we assessed that this campaign is targeted and uses malware developed by a professional software engineer who may be connected to the cybercriminal underground in China. However, the relationship between the malware developers and the campaign operators themselves remains unclear.

This white paper has been written to help understand and document the tools, tactics and techniques used in this campaign. Our full findings, including indicators of compromise and recommendations, are contained in our research paper, which will be available soon.

The popular photosharing app Instagram is the latest social networking site targeted by the ubiquitous survey scams seen on Facebook and Twitter. This time, we found that these survey scams may also lead users to download an Android malware.

I found the following accounts who wanted to ‘follow’ me on Instagram. This is the standard if your Instagram account is set to private. While checking these requests, the security researcher inside me noticed something off with some of the accounts.

Figure 1. Screenshot of Instagram request

To my validate my suspicions, I checked the page of these Instagram accounts and noticed that they all posted this “Get Free Followers!” photo. This post reminded me of the Pinterest free items promo survey scam we blogged in the past.

Figure 2. Get Free Followers Post on Instagram

Another thing that I found dubious is that these Instagram followers have repetitive account names like “Tawna Tawna” and “Concetta Concetta”.

Figure 3. Screenshot of sample spamming account

Given these suspicious signs, I then checked this “Get Free Followers” picture (which is actually clickable) and was lead to this page that supposedly offers the “Get Followers” app. This app is detected by Trend Micro as ANDROIDOS_GCMBOT.A, which can be used to launch malicious webpages or send SMS from the device.

Figure 4. Page offering ‘Get Free Follower’ app

Whether users download the said app or not (in my case, I tried to), in the end they are redirected to your run-of-the-mill survey scams. Since Instagram can also be accessed via a PC, we tried to access the malicious website and survey scam using a desktop. Fortunately, this ruse didn’t work.

Cybercriminals profit from these survey scams via ad-tracking sites, which users are redirected to before the actual survey page. Plus, these bad guys can also use the data gathered from these scams by either peddling them to other cybercriminal groups or using them in their future schemes.

Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, and now Instagram. The people behind these scams are jumping on every popular networking sites and potential engineering hooks like the Google Glass contest. To protect yourself against this scam, you must always double-check posts on your social media accounts, even if they come from friends, family members, or known acquaintance. Caution is your best defense. Trend Micro protects users from this threat by blocking the related URLs.

To know more about how these scammers (or online crooks in general) use and benefit from your data, you can check out our infographic How Cybercriminals Are Getting Better At Stealing Your Money.

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Last week’s OpUSA attacks resulted with no high-profile sites knocked offline, and damage limited to relatively unknown sites compromised and defaced. Still, the attack did show how hackers operate and “claim” their results in high-profile hacking “operations” like OpUSA. Using information provided both by the Smart Protection Network and the attackers themselves (via Pastebin), we were able to see, in part, how these attacks happen. What we found was that the attackers likely “stockpiled” an arsenal of compromised sites ahead of time to enable them to initiate a broad attack without warning.

We first looked at the sites that hackers had compromised as part of the OpUSA campaign. It quickly became apparent that there were patterns in the compromised URLs: the attackers had frequently uploaded files with names like islam.php, muslim.htm, jihad.htm, and usa.htm to the compromised site. A legitimate visitor would never visit or see these particular URLs, as they were completely separate from the main site and, in effect, “hidden”.

Looking at the feedback data provided by the Smart Protection Network, we found something very curious. We found that the URLs that fit the pattern had been accessed the day before the alleged attacks, on May 6. Legitimate users would not be visiting these sites, as we said above. So who was visiting these URLs?

Based on other evidence, we were able to determine that the sites had been compromised at least two days before May 7. This indicated that the traffic we saw was probably malicious – the attacker, perhaps, checking that the (compromised) site was still up.

Figure 1. Near-identical lists of compromised sites

However, the attacker was not doing so directly. We believe that the attacker was doing so via an infected machine that he was using as a proxy; one particular machine that was used this way had detected 89 malicious or suspicious files and accessed 173 malicious websites in the past 30 days. This indicates this particular machine had already been extensively affected by malware, and was in use by cybercriminals for all sorts of purposes – including as a proxy “service”.

Figure 2. Number of malicious files detected

What can users learn from this event? Primarily, it’s to treat the damages claimed in these sort of “campaigns” with some skepticism. Based on what we saw, attackers can “stockpile” compromised sites and release them when a major “campaign” like this is conducted, to make their claims of damage more impressive.

For security professionals, it’s a reminder that campaigns like OpUSA are not always a good indicator of when threats are likely to escalate. Preventing infection ahead of time can ensure you’re not caught up when attackers “flip the switch” on these high-profile campaign.

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IT administrators and the likes are expected to have a long day today, as Microsoft releases its security bulletin for May that resolves 33 vulnerabilities. Though this is not Microsoft’s biggest release (April 2011′s 17 bulletins addresomg 64 vulnerabilities come to mind), it is crucial for users to apply these security updates, which include a resolution to the zero-day incident involving the US Department of Labor webpage.

This roster of updates include two Critical bulletins addressing Internet Explorer (IE). The first one resolves around a vulnerability found on IE versions 6 to 10 on all Windows OSs, from Windows XP to Windows 8. It also addresses the vulnerability in IE 10 uncovered during the Pwn2Own contest last March.

The other critical IE bulletin deals with a vulnerability limited to IE 8, which made the headlines recently because of a related zero-day exploit found in a US Department of Labor webpage. Based on our own investigation, users visiting this compromised site are lead to a series of redirections until their systems are infected with a BKDR_POISON variant.

Even before this month’s release, Trend Micro Deep Security has been protecting users from this vulnerability via rule 1005491 – Microsoft Internet Explorer Use-After-Free Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2013-1347).

The rest of the bulletins were tagged as Important, which includes a security flaw in Windows that may lead to a denial of service (DoS) attack.

Just like last month, Adobe also released their security bulletins today, which include fixes for Adobe Reader and Acrobat, Flash Player. The software vendor also issued a “security hotfix” for a ColdFusion vulnerability, which is reportedly being exploited in the wild.

Users are advised to implement these bulletins as soon as possible to avoid exploits similar to the US DoL incident. For more details about how Trend Micro can protect users, you may refer to this Threat Encyclopedia page.

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App developers often include ads on their applications to increase revenue. These ads feature enticing titles or blurbs to surge more user hits. Typically, clicking these ads either prompt users to download an app or be redirected to a web page. However, cybercriminals who never run out of new ways to spread their deeds, could also use this as a venue to steal user information.

We recently spotted a fraudulent website which is pushed by ads found in multiple Android apps. (Some of these apps were downloaded from the Google Play store, while others were found from third-party stores.) These ads use popular brands as hooks like “iPhone 5” and “Samsung Galaxy Note II” and supposedly selling these items for a ridiculously low price. Once users click the ad, it will lead them to a website which shows many means to buy the said phones.

Figure 1. Ad for Samsung Galaxy Note II

Figure 2. Ad for iPhone 5

In reality, these sites are just scam sites that try to defraud users out of their money. They do not actually sell the devices they are promoting.

Figure 3. Fraudulent website advertising Samsung Galaxy Note II

Figure 4. Fraud website with iPhone 5 ad

These ads are being delivered by a large, mainstream ad network, which claims to be used by more than 90,000 apps. While this attack is currently limited to Chinese users, because of the large number of apps on this particular ad network it is possible that similar attacks will be delivered to other users in the future.

Last March, we blogged about Google’s decision to remove apps that block ads and the potential risks this may pose on unsuspecting users. No doubt the insufficient audit of ads on the Android platform may lead to more fraud, phishing attacks or even malware distribution. We recommend ad providers to provide more powerful audit mechanisms to protect users from attacks leveraging ads.

Trend Micro protects users from this attack by blocking the said malicious website. We also advise Android users to be cautious in clicking ads on their devices as this may potentially lead to information and identity theft. For better protection of your devices, users should also be wary of other mobile threats like malicious URLs and mobile phishing sites.

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