Security Week 51: email attacks from lookalike domains

Kaspersky Lab experts in detail disassemble one of the attacks on corporations using lookalike domains – when a phishing e-mail is sent from a domain that is one letter different from the real one. This approach on the part of the attacker turns out to be slightly more profitable than traditional spoofing, when the sender’s address is simply forged. Modern inbound authentication technologies, such as SPF, DKIM and DMARC, are fairly reliable in identifying outright forgeries. The letter from the lookalike domain contains all the necessary digital signatures and can pass filters. Such an attack is considered within the framework of a general phenomenon known as Business E-Mail Compromise: This is not a large-scale random distribution, but rather a deliberate attempt to hack into the company’s infrastructure, steal money through sending a plausible invoice, and so on.

Accordingly, the lifespan of such attacks is short. In 73% of cases, fake domains are active for one day and are used to send a small number of messages, or even a single one, to a predetermined victim. Analysis of attacks using lookalike domains shows that in 2020 they were most often targeted at companies engaged in e-commerce (food delivery, online shopping, air ticket sales, etc.). IT services are in second place, followed by industrial production and retail. Last year, the alignment was different: the relatively “expensive” (in terms of time spent on preliminary exploration, but not technology) attack threatened primarily corporations in the financial industry.

Large companies invest certain efforts in protecting against attacks from domains with extra (missing, confused) letters: most often it is the preventive registration of all similar domains. This approach has an understandable drawback: there are many options for domains, and in a large organization a fake letter can come not only from a “own” lookalike address, but also from addresses that look like contractors’ contacts. The second method is to add lookalike domains to the blacklist, which is fraught with typos and blocking legitimate messages. The study proposes a protection method using a modern anti-spam solution. It not only maintains an up-to-date list of already used lookalike domains, but also analyzes the sender of the letter according to a specific algorithm. A message from a previously unknown source is quarantined, whois records are analyzed, the time of domain creation and other parameters are noted. The similarity of the sender’s address to regular correspondence, combined with other information revealed during domain analysis, allows you to more accurately separate normal correspondence from phishing attacks.

The article contains data the FBI and the Internet Crime Complaint Center. Aggregated statistics from reports over the past five years show that damage from email attacks has grown fivefold in the United States alone. Public examples of successful BEC attacks are striking in scale and relatively easy to attack. $ 50 million stolen by sending invoices for payment from a domain similar to the address of a major Taiwanese manufacturer. 37 million lost subsidiary of Toyota. An example of slightly more subtle mail fraud: cybercriminals connected to the correspondence between the two football clubs and took one of the tranches of the player’s transfer to their accounts. The damage is half a million dollars. Despite the evolution of modern communication methods (messengers and teleconferencing), email remains an actively used and no less regularly attacked business tool.

What else happened

Serious vulnerability discovered in medical devices, in particular, MRI and X-ray machines manufactured by GE. This technique is controlled by a Unix-based computer to which the manufacturer can connect for maintenance. Logins and passwords for connection are default and cannot be changed by the operating organization. Until they are forcedly changed by the service company, it is recommended to restrict access to devices via standard FTP, SSH and Telnet protocols.

FireEye Company reports about hacking servers and stealing tools for testing the security of the corporate perimeter. In other words, the cybercriminals gained access to a well-oiled set of “master keys” – exploits for various vulnerabilities in software and network infrastructure. In addition to public disclosure, the company also posted on Github, a set of rules to identify and block attacks using stolen software.

Another publication by Kaspersky Lab at the end of 2020 explores new habits of remote workers and related threats. Attacks on employees have not fundamentally changed this year, but there are more vulnerabilities in the corporate infrastructure. One of the examples in the study: widespread use of home computers and personal accounts at a distance – most often accounts in mail and instant messengers – for work tasks. Or vice versa – using a work computer for personal affairs.

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *