We found a spam campaign that uses compromised devices to attack vulnerable web servers. From the devices, attackers use a PHP script to send an email with an embedded link to a scam site to specific email addresses. The use of compromised devices for attacks make attribution difficult, and attackers can have repeated access to the server even after patching.
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By sifting through six months’ worth of data (Jan-Jun 2019) covering over 50,000 samples from the Trend Micro™ Smart Protection Network™ infrastructure, we managed to gain insight into how Powload has incorporated new techniques to increase its effectiveness, especially in its ability to hide from detection.
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In some of the recent Powload-related incidents we saw, we noticed significant changes to some of the attachments in the spam emails: the use of steganography and targeting of specific countries. Figure 2 shows the difference. For example, the samples we analyzed in early 2018 had more straightforward infection chains. These updates added another stage to the execution of malicious routines as a way to evade detection.
The Powload variants that use these techniques drop and execute the Ursnif and Bebloh data stealers. We did not see any notable differences in the payloads’ routines. The distribution tactics also resemble a spam campaign we uncovered last year, which delivered the same information stealers but distributed via the Cutwail botnet.
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Trickbot’s authors clearly aren’t done updating it — we recently found a new variant that uses an updated version of the pwgrab module that lets it grab remote application credentials.
Read More Cybercriminals make use of old file types in brand-new ways in spam attachments, proving that they are regularly experimenting to evade spam filters.
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