Russian cybersecurity expert company identified a massive phishing and spam campaign conducted in the second quarter of 2017 against companies
Cybersecurity is a problem that mainly concerns companies, the main target of hackers because of the valuable information they guard. In the second quarter of 2017, businesses were also targeted with emails containing ZIP archives and protected by passwords.
This is what Kaspersky Lab, a Russian company specializing in cybersecurity, says. It is a trivial and already seen strategy, but at the same time able to make many companies fall into the trap. Kaspersky identified an impressive campaign of phishing and spam in the analyzed period, in growth of 1,07% compared to the previous quarter, and mainly addressed to companies. In particular, there were many emails received by companies containing malicious attachments. In the cases brought to light by the company expert in informatics security, the hackers tried to deceive the victims pretending to be international couriers.
The malicious archive files
In the text of the messages, the authors of the phishing emails, trying to induce the victims to open the malicious ZIP archives, referred to important information for the delivery. Inside the malicious files, delivered via email, were dangerous Trojans, which would allow the hackers to download more malware onto the computers of the affected companies. And that’s not all.
To make the cyber scam even more credible, in addition to the ZIP attachment, there was also a malicious link in the message, disguised as a shipment tracking number. If the victims had opened the link, they would have ended up on a server from which they would have then downloaded a malware, used by the hackers to install a banking trojan.
The password-protected attachments
In addition to the emails received from the fake couriers, the companies were flooded with messages containing an archive file, but protected by password. The credentials were, however, provided within the text of the email message.
According to Kaspersky, this strategy aims to make victims believe that the attachment includes confidential information. And then there is also the fact that an archive file has to be decompressed in order to be checked by antivirus software. Opening it, however, the unlucky victims risk installing the malware hidden inside the ZIP archive.
How to protect yourself
The most effective way to protect yourself against phishing and spam emails is to always check the reliability of the sender. It is important to avoid opening attachments and links, which arrived via suspicious messages. It is also necessary to install a good antivirus and keep your pc always updated.