Friday, March 29, 2024

Analyzing Phishing Attacks that use malicious PDFs

Analyzing Phishing attacks

Every day everybody receives many phishing attacks with malicious docs or PDFs. I decided to take a look at one of these files. I did a static analysis and I went straight to the point to make this reading simple and fast.

Here is the received email as it was from the Caixa Economica Federal bank, but we can see the sender uses Gmail services and a strange name.

Analyzing Phishing attacks

I verified this e-mail header using MXtoolbox, and we can see the IP used by the sender (attacker).

Analyzing Phishing attacks email headers

Below is the reputation of the IP used by the attacker.

Analyzing Phishing attacks abusipdb

We can see this IP has a lot of mentions about malicious activities.

phishing PDFs

I downloaded this file in my VPS (Kali Linux) and used peepdf to do an analysis of the file structure, and I found 2 URIs in objects 3 and 5.

After I checked objects 3 and 5 using pdf-parser, I discovered a malicious URL in the 3.

I did a check about this URL in VirusTotal and it had a malicious reputation.

virustotal analysis

When I opened the file in the Kali, we could see it had an original logo of the bank and a button to click that will direct me to an URL.

When I clicked in this button the URL hxxp://cefonlineencaminha[.]z13[.[]web[.]core[.]windows[.]net redirect to another URL ms[.]meuappavisos[.]com

I checked the URL reputation, and it has a lot of mentions about it.

phishing PDFs

In conclusion, it’s essential to take care and attention to each detail when you open this kind of email because you can put your machine in a dangerous situation, have your data exfiltrated, be hacked and etc.

Tools used during the analysis:

Recommended:  No sign of reprieve from Ransomware attacks for companies leading into 2022

source

You may also enjoy reading, CVEs You May Have Missed While Log4J Stole The Headlines

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  • Globally, 30,000 websites are hacked daily.
  • 64% of companies worldwide have experienced at least one form of a cyber attack.
  • There were 20M breached records in March 2021.
  • In 2020, ransomware cases grew by 150%.
  • Email is responsible for around 94% of all malware.
  • Every 39 seconds, there is a new attack somewhere on the web.
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Steven Black (n0tst3)
Hello! I'm Steve, an independent security researcher, and analyst from Scotland, UK. I've had an avid interest in Computers, Technology and Security since my early teens. 20 years on, and, it's a whole lot more complicated... I've assisted Governments, Individuals and Organizations throughout the world. Including; US DOJ, NHS UK, GOV UK. I'll often reblog infosec-related articles that I find interesting. On the RiSec website, You'll also find a variety of write-ups, tutorials and much more!

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