Cybercriminals impersonate UPS in client-side exploits and malware serving spam campaign
In an attempt to aggregate as much traffic as possible, cybercriminals systematically abuse popular brands and online services. Next to periodically rotating the brands, they also produce professional looking email templates, in an attempt to successfully brand-jack these companies, and trick their customers into interacting with the malicious emails.
Today’s highlight is on a currently spamvertised client-side exploits and malware serving campaign impersonating UPS (United Parcel Service). Once users click on the links found in the malicious email, they’re automatically redirected to a Black Hole exploit kit landing page serving client-side exploits, and ultimately dropping malware on the exploited hosts.
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New Russian service sells access to compromised social networking accounts
On daily basis, hundreds of thousands of legitimate accounts across multiple social networks get compromised, to be later on abused as a platform for launching related cyber attacks and social engineering attempts.
Recently, I came across a new Russian service offering access to compromised accounts across multiple social networks such as Vkontakte, Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, and last but not least, compromised email accounts. What’s particularly interesting about this service is the fact that it’s exclusively targeting Russian and Ukrainian users.
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Online dating scam campaign currently circulating in the wild
Lonely birds, beware!
Russian online dating scammers are currently spamvertising a fraudulent campaign attempting to socially engineer users into interacting with a bogus online dating service.
What’s so special about this scam? Just how vibrant is the Russian online dating fraud market segment? How can you avoid falling victim into their fraudulent schemes?
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Spamvertised American Airlines themed emails lead to Black Hole exploit kit
American Airlines customers, watch where you click! Cybercriminals are currently spamvertising millions of emails impersonating the company in an attempt to trick end and corporate users into clicking on the malicious links found in the spamvertised email.
Upon execution, the campaign redirects users to a Black Hole exploit kit landing URL, where client-side exploits are served against outdated third-party software and browser plugins.
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What’s the underground market’s going rate for a thousand U.S based malware infected hosts?
Imagine you’re a cybercriminal that has somehow managed to infect a 1000 U.S based hosts and is looking for ways to monetize his malicious activity? He could easily start spreading spam or phishing emails, use the infected hosts as a platform for disseminating related malware attacks, or basically data mine the infected hosts for accounting data to be later on sold to fellow cybercriminals.
What if all he wanted to do is earn as much profit in the shortest possible amount of time without investing more efforts into the monetization of the infected hosts? Is the cybercrime ecosystem mature enough to offer him an alternative? Appreciate the rhetoric. The maturing cybercrime ecosystem is fully capable of offering him a high liquidity monetization approach for earning revenue by infecting hosts and spreading a specific undetectable executable pushed by the pay-per-install affiliate network that I’ll profile in this post.
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Phishing campaign targeting Gmail, Yahoo, AOL and Hotmail spotted in the wild
Cybercriminals are masters of multi-tasking. For instance, whenever a web server gets compromised, they will not only use its clean IP reputation to host phishing, spam and malware samples on it, they will also sell access to the shell allowing other cybercriminals the opportunity to engage in related malicious activities such as, mass scanning of remotely exploitable web application vulnerabilities.
Today, I intercepted a currently active phishing campaign that’s a good example of a popular tactic used by cybercriminal known as ‘campaign optimization’. The reason this campaign is well optimized it due to the fact that as it simultaneously targets Gmail, Yahoo, AOL and Windows Hotmail email users.
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117,000 unique U.S visitors offered for malware conversion
In 2012 it’s becoming increasingly common for cybercriminals to apply basic quality assurance (QA) tactics to their campaigns. Next to QA, they also emphasize on campaign optimization strategies allowing them to harness the full potential of the malicious campaign.
Recently, I came across to an underground forum advertisement selling access to 117,000 unique U.S visitors — stats gathered over a period of 8 hours — for the purpose of redirecting them to a Black Hole web malware exploitation kit landing URL. The traffic aggregation taking place through black hat SEO (search engine optimization), is aiming to exploit a group of users known to have high purchasing power, namely, American citizens.
Are such underground market propositions offering traffic exchange deals gaining popularity, or are they just a fad? What’s the infection rate for 117,000 U.S based users redirected to a BlackHole exploits serving landing URL? Let’s find out.
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Cybercriminals launch managed SMS flooding services
Mobile devices are an inseparable part of the modern cybercrime ecosystem. From ATM skimmers with SMS notification next to fake antivirus scanners for Android users, the growth of the mobile malware segment is pretty evident.
In this post I’ll profile a recently spamvertised managed SMS flooding service, in the context of E-banking fraud, and just how exactly are cybercriminals using the service as a way to evade detection of their fraudulent transactions.
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Spamvertised bogus online casino themed emails serving W32/Casonline
Cybercriminals are currently spamvertising hundreds of thousands of emails enticing end and corporate users into clicking on links leading to bogus online casinos requiring the installation of an executable file.
This is the second bogus casino themed campaign I’ve intercepted in recent months, and the third time when I profile the distribution and infection vectors of W32/Casonline.
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Spamvertised ‘DHL Express Parcel Tracking Notification’ emails serving malware
Remember the “Spamvertised ‘DHL Package delivery report’ emails serving malware” campaign profiled earlier this month?
It seems that another cybercrime gang has started impersonating DHL in an attempt to serve malware to the millions of spamvertised end and corporate users.
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Spamvertised ‘Confirm PayPal account” notifications lead to phishing sites
PayPay users, beware! Phishers have just started spamvertising hundreds of thousands of legitimately-looking PayPal themed emails, in an attempt to trick users into entering their accounting data on the fraudulent web site linked in the emails.
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Spamvertised ‘Your UPS delivery tracking’ emails serving client-side exploits and malware
Cybercriminals are currently spamvertising millions of emails impersonating United Parcel Service (UPS) in an attempt to trick end and corporate users into clicking on exploits and malware serving links found in the malicious emails. What exploits are they using? How widespread is the campaign? Is it an isolated incident, or is the campaign linked to more malicious activity?
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