When the Phisher Messes Up With Encoding
A reader contacted us (thank you, Scott) to share an interesting phishing email. We are always looking for fresh meat, don't hesitate to share your samples with us! I had a look at the EML file provided by Scott, and it looked indeed weird.
When you open the mail in Outlook, it looks like this:
You could think that first reflex, this is a phishing campaign targeting Chinese people. If we look a bit deeper, we see that the document is lacking any "format" (paragraphs, carriage returns, ...), and there are here and there "emoticons". This looks definitively like an encoding problem.
If you check the raw EML file, there is this piece of code at the beginning of the mail body:
<=00m=00e=00t=00a=00 =00h=00t=00t=00p=00-=00e=00q=00u=00i=00v=00=3D=00"=00C= =00o=00n=00t=00e=00n=00t=00-=00T=00y=00p=00e=00"=00 =00c=00o=00n=00t=00e=00= n=00t=00=3D=00"=00t=00e=00x=00t=00/=00h=00t=00m=00l=00;=00 =00c=00h=00a=00r= =00s=00e=00t=00=3D=00u=00t=00f=00-=001=006=00"=00>=00<html><head><meta http= -equiv=3D"Content-Type" content=3D"text/html; charset=3Dunicode"> =20 <meta http-equiv=3D"X-UA-Compatible" content=3D"IE=3Dedge"> <title></title>= </head>=20 <body>
Export the body and open it in a text editor, you will get:
As you can see, the attacker messed up the encoding, and Outlook cannot display the mail body correctly. Here is what should be displayed:
Note that the attackers not only messed up with the encoding, they also messed up the variable replacement with correct values ("[EMail]", "[Date_short]", ...).
The link points to a Java RAT stored on the Discord CDN[1]. The RAT connects to its C2 server via magicfinger[.]ddns[.]net
[1] https://bazaar.abuse.ch/sample/d7b24068f673031c8c27271bf36790f9468b8c27ec08c51a348fc08c34ff6881/
Xavier Mertens (@xme)
Xameco
Senior ISC Handler - Freelance Cyber Security Consultant
PGP Key
Comments
Anonymous
Dec 3rd 2022
10 months ago
Anonymous
Dec 3rd 2022
10 months ago
<a hreaf="https://technolytical.com/">the social network</a> is described as follows because they respect your privacy and keep your data secure. The social networks are not interested in collecting data about you. They don't care about what you're doing, or what you like. They don't want to know who you talk to, or where you go.
<a hreaf="https://technolytical.com/">the social network</a> is not interested in collecting data about you. They don't care about what you're doing, or what you like. They don't want to know who you talk to, or where you go. The social networks only collect the minimum amount of information required for the service that they provide. Your personal information is kept private, and is never shared with other companies without your permission
Anonymous
Dec 26th 2022
9 months ago
Anonymous
Dec 26th 2022
9 months ago
<a hreaf="https://defineprogramming.com/the-public-bathroom-near-me-find-nearest-public-toilet/"> nearest public toilet to me</a>
<a hreaf="https://defineprogramming.com/the-public-bathroom-near-me-find-nearest-public-toilet/"> public bathroom near me</a>
Anonymous
Dec 26th 2022
9 months ago
<a hreaf="https://defineprogramming.com/the-public-bathroom-near-me-find-nearest-public-toilet/"> nearest public toilet to me</a>
<a hreaf="https://defineprogramming.com/the-public-bathroom-near-me-find-nearest-public-toilet/"> public bathroom near me</a>
Anonymous
Dec 26th 2022
9 months ago
Anonymous
Dec 26th 2022
9 months ago
https://defineprogramming.com/
Dec 26th 2022
9 months ago
distribute malware. Even if the URL listed on the ad shows a legitimate website, subsequent ad traffic can easily lead to a fake page. Different types of malware are distributed in this manner. I've seen IcedID (Bokbot), Gozi/ISFB, and various information stealers distributed through fake software websites that were provided through Google ad traffic. I submitted malicious files from this example to VirusTotal and found a low rate of detection, with some files not showing as malware at all. Additionally, domains associated with this infection frequently change. That might make it hard to detect.
https://clickercounter.org/
https://defineprogramming.com/
Dec 26th 2022
9 months ago
rthrth
Jan 2nd 2023
9 months ago