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In this recently reported targeted attack on CEOs of various companies (also known as “whale phishing,” due to the size and stature of the affluent targets), a bogus subpoena request attempts to trick recipients into clicking a link in the spammed email messages. The link purports to give users access to the related court documents in a bogus subpoena action.

If victims do click on the malicious link in the email, they will arrive at the Web site pretending to house the information (shown above), then prompted to download and install a browser plug-in to proceed in viewing the files.

The malicious “browser plug-in” (named Acrobat.exe in this instance) is actually TROJ_AGENT.AMAL.

The attack seems to work due to various social engineering techniques, each of which is not necessarily new.

The United States District Court has posted an advisory regarding these bogus subpoena requests, and so has the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).

Anyone receiving such a request is thus advised to treat this solicitation with extreme caution. If there is reason to believe that the email is valid, consult the matter with your lawyer. Do not click on links in unsolicited email. Period.

Additional input from Paul Ferguson, Advanced Threats Research