Cyber Threats
"Cybercriminals are unleashing a surprisingly high volume of new threats in this short period of time to take advantage of inadvertent security gaps as organizations are in a rush to ensure business continuity.”
Cyber security firm Fortinet on Monday announced that over the past several weeks, it has been monitoring a significant spike in COVID-19 related threats.
An unprecedented number of unprotected users and devices are now online with one or two people in every home connecting remotely to work through the internet. Simultaneously there are children at home engaged in remote learning and the entire family is engaged in multi-player games, chatting with friends as well as streaming music and video. The cybersec firm’s FortiGuard Labs is observing this perfect storm of opportunity being exploited by cybercriminals as the Threat Report on the Pandemic highlights:
A surge in Phishing Attacks: The research shows an average of about 600 new phishing campaigns every day. The content is designed to either prey on the fears and concerns of individuals or pretend to provide essential information on the current pandemic. The phishing attacks range from scams related to helping individuals deposit their stimulus for Covid-19 tests, to providing access to Chloroquine and other medicines or medical device, to providing helpdesk support for new teleworkers.
Phishing Scams Are Just the Start: While the attacks start with a phishing attack, their end goal is to steal personal information or even target businesses through teleworkers. Majority of the phishing attacks contain malicious payloads – including ransomware, viruses, remote access trojans (RATs) designed to provide criminals with remote access to endpoint systems, and even RDP (remote desktop protocol) exploits.
A Sudden Spike in Viruses: The first quarter of 2020 has documented a 17% increase in viruses for January, a 52% increase for February and an alarming 131% increase for March compared to the same period in 2019. The significant rise in viruses is mainly attributed to malicious phishing attachments. Multiple sites that are illegally streaming movies that were still in theatres secretly infect malware to anyone who logs on. Free game, free movie, and the attacker is on your network.
Risks for IoT Devices magnify: As users are all connected to the home network, attackers have multiple avenues of attack that can be exploited targeting devices including computers, tablets, gaming and entertainment systems and even online IoT devices such as digital cameras, smart appliances – with the ultimate goal of finding a way back into a corporate network and its valuable digital resources.
Ransomware like attack to disrupt business: If the device of a remote worker can be compromised, it can become a conduit back into the organization’s core network, enabling the spread of malware to other remote workers. The resulting business disruption can be just as effective as ransomware targeting internal network systems for taking a business offline. Since helpdesks are now remote, devices infected with ransomware or a virus can incapacitate workers for days while devices are mailed in for reimaging.
“Though organizations have completed the initial phase of transitioning their entire workforce to remote telework and employees are becoming increasingly comfortable with their new reality, CISOs continue to face new challenges presented by maintaining a secure teleworker business model. From redefining their security baseline, or supporting technology enablement for remote workers, to developing detailed policies for employees to have access to data, organizations must be nimble and adapt quickly to overcome these new problems that are arising”, said Derek Manky, Chief, Security Insights & Global Threat Alliances at Fortinet – Office of CISO.
WhatsApp messages masquerading as an offer from Maruti Suzuki with links luring unsuspecting users with the promise of Maruti Suzuki 40th Anniversary Celebration presents, have been making the rounds on the app. If you receive such messages try to stay away from it, as it can be a scam.
The Research Wing of CyberPeace Foundation along with Autobot Infosec Private Limited have conducted a study based on a WhatsApp message that contained a link pretending to be a free gift offer from Maruti Suzuki which asks users to participate in a survey in order to get a chance to win a Maruti Baleno Sigma MT car.
Warning SignsThe campaign pretends to be an offer from Maruti Suzuki but is hosted on a third party domain instead of the official Maruti Suzuki website which makes it more suspicious.
The domain names associated with the campaign have been registered in very recent times.
Multiple redirections have been noticed between the links.
No reputed site would ask its users to share the campaign on WhatsApp.
The prize is kept really attractive to lure the laymen.
Grammatical mistakes have been noticed.
A congratulations message appears on the landing page with an attractive photo of Maruti Suzuki cars that asks users to participate in a quick survey in order to get a “Maruti Suzuki BALENO Sigma MT”. Also, the bottom of the page seems to appear like a comment section with public comments establishing the truthfulness of the offer.
The survey starts with some basic questions like Do you know Maruti Suzuki?, How old are you?, How do you think of Maruti Suzuki?, Are you male or female? Etc. Once the user answers the questions a “congratulatory message” is displayed.
On clicking the OK button users are given three attempts to win the prize. After completing all the attempts a message pops up that the user has won “Maruti Suzuki BALENO Sigma MT”. It then prompts the user to share the message on WhatsApp.
Strangely enough the user has to keep clicking the WhatsApp button until the progress bar completes. After clicking on the green ‘WhatsApp’ button multiple times it shows a section where an instruction has been given to complete registration in order to get the prize.
After clicking on the green ‘Complete registration’ button, it redirects the user to multiple advertisements web pages varying each time the user clicks on the button.
During the analysis the research team found a javascript code called hm.js was being executed in the background from the host hm[.]baidu[.]com which is a subdomain of Baidu and is used for Baidu Analytics, also known as Baidu Tongji. The important part is that Baidu is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services, products and artificial intelligence, headquartered in Beijing’s Haidian district, China.To read the full report, please click (https://www.cyberpeace.org/CyberPeace/Repository/20210828Research-report-on-Maruti-Suzuki-40th-Anniversary-Celebration-free-gift-scam.pdf) here:
Conclusive Summary
1. The whole research activity was performed in a secured sandbox environment where the WhatsApp application was not installed. If any user opens the link from a device like smartphones where the WhatsApp application is installed, the sharing features on the site will open the Whatsapp application on the device to share the link.
2. The campaign collects browser and system information from the users.
3. Most of the domain names associated with the campaign have the registrant country as China.
4. Cybercriminals used Cloudflare technologies to mask the real IP addresses of the front-end domain names used in this Maruti Suzuki 40th Anniversary Celebration free gift campaign. But during the phases of investigation, the research team has identified a domain name that was requested in the background and has been traced as belonging to China.
CyberPeace Advisory
1. CyberPeace Foundation and Autobot Infosec recommend that people should avoid opening such messages sent via social platforms.
2. If at all, the user gets into this trap, it could lead to whole system compromise such as access to the microphone, Camera, Text Messages, Contacts, Pictures, Videos, Banking Applications, etc as well as financial losses.
3. Do not share confidential details like login credentials, banking information with such a type of scam.
4. Do not share or forward fake messages containing links without proper verification.
5. There is a need for International Cyber Cooperation between countries to bust the cybercriminal gangs running the fraud campaigns affecting individuals and organizations, to make Cyberspace resilient and peaceful.
