Ongoing Spam Campaign Related to Swift

Published: 2016-06-20. Last Updated: 2016-06-20 13:07:07 UTC
by Xavier Mertens (Version: 1)

Some of our readers reported spam messages related to the recent Swift case. With all the buzz around this story, it looks legitimate to see more and more attackers using this scenario to entice victims to open malicious files. The mail subject is "Swift Payment Notice, pls check" and contains an image of a receipt embedded in an HTML page:

The HTML link point to a malicious PE file called "SWIFT COPY.exe" (MD5: 6ccabab506ad6a8f13c6d84b955c3037). The file is downloaded from a compromized Wordpress instance and seems to contain a keylogger. Data are sent to onyeoma5050s.ddns.net. The host resolved to 95.140.125.110 but it is not valid anymore (take down already completed?)

Even if PE files should be blocked by most web proxies, the current VT score remains low (6/55) which still makes it dangerous.

Xavier Mertens (@xme)
ISC Handler - Freelance Security Consultant
PGP Key

Keywords: Malware Spam Swift

4 comment(s)

Using Your Password Manager to Monitor Data Leaks

Published: 2016-06-20. Last Updated: 2016-06-20 08:43:22 UTC
by Xavier Mertens (Version: 1)

4 comment(s)

I wrote this diary while waiting for my flight back to home. Last week, SANSFIRE was held in Washington where I met some ISC handlers. I did not pay too much attention to the security news but I faced an interesting story. Recently, a data leak affected LinkedIn and a friend of mine had a chance to have access to the data (o.a. decrypted passwords). He contacted my and suggested to change my password as soon as possible (as a proof, he sent my password). It was indeed a “valid” one but not my “current” one. More precisely, it was the very first password that I used when a created my LinkedIn account (a long time ago). Interesting… It means that the leaked is not recent.

Passwords are a sensitive topic: don’t play with fire and follow this golden rule: Change them often and don’t re-use them. The “leak” which affected TeamViewer is a good example. I put leak between quotes because it appeared that some of their users were compromised due to password re-use as they stated. To track and analyze this, password managers and dormant accounts can be very useful to track data leaks.

Usually, when I receive an invitation to create an account on a website, I accept it and create a unique email account that will NEVER be used somewhere else. I'm using something like: "website-url (at) unused (dot) rootshell (dot) be" or “login_webshop.com". This helps me to track:

Spammers: I can “learn” which site leaked (or sold?) my details to spammers.
Data leaks: By crawling paste websites for my dormant email addresses or logins.

Another interesting feature of some password managers (well, the one I’m using includes it), they keep a history of the previous passwords and time stamps (when they have been changed):

Based on this information, I’m able to estimate when the data leak really occurred and if it is really coming from the supposed victim or from another source. This is a new proof that password managers are mandatory for everybody: they protect you and they contain useful data to analyze security incidents. Stay safe!

Xavier Mertens (@xme)
ISC Handler - Freelance Security Consultant
PGP Key

Keywords: data leak password managers passwords

4 comment(s)