EXPOSED: How These Scammers Tried To Use LinkedIn To Steal Our Client’s Passwords

EXPOSED: How These Scammers Tried To Use LinkedIn To Steal Our Client’s Passwords

LinkedIn Scammers

Earlier this morning one of our more savvy customers received an email from [email protected]. The email contained a “New Message Received” notification allegedly sourced from CEO Tom Morgan. Contained in the email was a link that read, “Click here to sign in and read your messages”. Fortunately we had already provided training to this particular customer that covered Social Engineering and Phishing threats. So, rather than click on the link they forwarded the email to Netragard’s Special Project Team, which is like throwing meat to the wolves. The actual email is provided below in figure 1.
Figure 1
Figure1
The first step in learning about who was behind this threat was to follow the “click here” link. The link was shortened using the URL shortener ow.ly and so we used curl to expand it. While we were hopeful that the URL would deliver some sort of awesome zeroday or malware, it didn’t. Instead it served up a fake LinkedIn page (Figure 2) designed to steal login and password information.
Figure 2
figure2
The server hosting the phishing site was located in Lebanon and of course was not maintained or patched properly. Quick reconnaissance showed that directory listing was enabled, that the server was using an outdated and very exploitable version of cPanel, and that the server had been breached by at least four other parties (there were at least 4 backdoors installed). We used one of the backdoors to gain access to the system in the hopes of learning more (Figure 3).
Figure 3figure3

Our team quickly zeroed in on the “linkd.php” file that was used to generate the phishing page shown in Figure 2.   We explored the file looking for information related to where stolen passwords were being kept. Initially we expected to see the passwords logged to a text file but later found that they were being emailed to an external Gmail account. We also looked for anything that might provide us with information about who was being targeted with this attack but didn’t find much on the system.
We were able to identify the victims of the campaign by making hidden modifications to the attackers phishing platform. These modifications allowed us to track who submitted their credentials to the phishing site. When studying the submission data it quickly became apparent that the attackers were almost exclusively targeting Luxembourg based email addresses (.lu TLD’s) and were having a disturbingly high degree of success. Given that people often reuse passwords in multiple locations this campaign significantly increased the level of risk faced by organizations that employ the victims. More directly, chances are high that organizations will be breached using the stolen passwords.
The LinkedIn campaign was hardly the only campaign being launched from the server. Other campaigns were identified that included but may not be limited to DHL, Google, Yahoo and DropBox. The DropBox campaign was by far the most technically advanced. It leveraged blacklisting to avoid serving the phishing content to Netcraft, Kaspersky, BitDefender, Fortinet, Google, McAfee, AlienVault, Avira, AVG, ESET, Doctor Web, Panda, Symantec, and more. In addition to the blacklisting it used an external proxy checker to ensure page uptime.
Finally, we tracked the IP addresses that were connecting to the system’s various backdoor.  Those IP addresses all geolocated to Nigeria and are unfortunately dynamic.

Summary
This phishing campaign highlights two specific issues that can both be countered with careful planning.  The first is that employees are easy to phish especially when they are outside of the office and not protected by spam filters.  This is problematic because employees often reuse the same passwords at work as they do outside of work.  So stealing a LinkedIn password often provides attackers with access to other more sensitive resources which can quickly result in a damaging breach and access to an organizations critical assets.   The solution to this issue is reasonably simple.  Employees should be required to undergo regular training for various aspects of security including but not limited Social Engineering and Phishing.  Second, Employers should require employees to use password management tools similar to 1Password.  Using password management tools properly will eliminate password reuse and significantly mitigate the potential damages associated with password theft.
As for our Nigerian friends, they won’t be operating much longer.

Blog Posts

Karen Huggins

Chief Financial, HR and Admin Officer
Divider
Karen joined the Netragard team in 2017 and oversees Netragard’s financial, human resources as well as administration functions. She also provides project management support to the operations and overall strategy of Netragard.
 
Prior to joining Netragard, she worked at RBC Investor Services Bank in Luxembourg in the role of Financial Advisor to the Global CIO of Investor Services, as well as several years managing the Financial Risk team to develop and implement new processes in line with regulatory requirements around their supplier services/cost and to minimize the residual risk to the organization.
 
With over 20 years of experience in finance with global organizations, she brings new perspective that will help the organization become more efficient as a team. She received her Bachelor of Finance from The Florida State University in the US and her Master of Business Administration at ESSEC Business School in Paris, France.

Philippe Caturegli

Chief Hacking Officer
Divider
Philippe has over 20 years of experience in information security. Prior to joining Netragard, Philippe was a Senior Manager within the Information & Technology Risk practice at Deloitte Luxembourg where he led a team in charge of Security & Privacy engagements.

Philippe has over 10 years of experience in the banking and financial sector that includes security assessment of large and complex infrastructures and penetration testing of data & voice networks, operating systems, middleware and web applications in Europe, US and Middle East.

Previously, Philippe held roles within the information system security department of a global pharmaceutical company in London. While working with a heterogeneous network of over 100,000 users across the world and strict regulatory requirements, Philippe gained hands-on experience with various security technologies (VPN, Network and Application Firewalls, IDS, IPS, Host Intrusion Prevention, etc.)

Philippe actively participates in the Information Security community. He has discovered and published several security vulnerabilities in leading products such as Cisco, Symantec and Hewlett-Packard.

He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), PCI Qualified Security Assessors (PCI-QSA), OSSTMM Professional Security Analyst (OPSA), OSSTMM Professional Security Tester (OPST), Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC)and Associate Member of the Business Continuity Institute (AMBCI).

Adriel Desautels

Chief Technology Officer
Divider
Adriel T. Desautels, has over 20 years of professional experience in information security. In 1998, Adriel founded Secure Network Operations, Inc. which was home to the SNOsoft Research Team. SNOsoft gained worldwide recognition for its vulnerability research work which played a pivotal role in helping to establish today’s best practices for responsible disclosure. While running SNOsoft, Adriel created the zeroday Exploit Acquisition Program (“EAP”), which was transferred to, and continued to operate under Netragard.
 
In 2006, Adriel founded Netragard on the premise of delivering high-quality Realistic Threat Penetration Testing services, known today as Red Teaming. Adriel continues to act as a primary architect behind Netragard’s services, created and manages Netragard’s 0-day Exploit Acquisition Program and continues to be an advocate for ethical 0-day research, use and sales.
 
Adriel is frequently interviewed as a subject matter expert by media outlets that include, Forbes, The Economist, Bloomberg, Ars Technica, Gizmodo, and The Register. Adriel is often an invited keynote or panelist at events such as Blackhat USA, InfoSec World, VICELAND Cyberwar, BSides, and NAW Billion Dollar CIO Roundtable.