Ride the Lightning

Businesses Being Attacked Using Their Own Contact Forms

April 13, 2021

Bleeping Computer reported on April 9 that cyber attackers are using legitimate corporate contact forms to send phishing emails that threaten businesses with lawsuits and attempt to infect them with the IcedID info-stealing malware.

IcedID is a modular banking trojan first spotted in 2017 and updated to deploy second-stage malware payloads, including Trickbot, Qakbot, and Ryuk ransomware.

The attackers can use it to download additional modules after infecting a device, steal credentials and financial information, and move laterally across the victims’ networks to compromise more computers and deploy more payloads.

Recently detected by the Microsoft 365 Defender Threat Intelligence Team, this phishing campaign seems to have found a way to bypass contact forms’ CAPTCHA protection to target businesses with a flood of phishing messages.

Microsoft threat intelligence analysts Emily Hacker and Justin Carroll observed “an influx of contact form emails targeted at enterprises by means of abusing companies’ contact forms.”

“This indicates that attackers may have used a tool that automates this process while circumventing CAPTCHA protections,” the Microsoft threat analysts said.

Importantly, by using this tactic, the attackers bypass the targeted enterprise’s secure email gateways, significantly increasing their phishing messages’ chance of landing in a target’s inbox instead of getting flagged and sent to the spam folder.

To increase their attacks’ success, the would-be hackers threaten their targets with legal action for copyright infringements to pressure them into clicking embedded links directing them to IcedID payloads.

The recipients are told to click on an embedded link to review the attackers’ “evidence” but are instead redirected to a Google Sites-hosted website used to deliver the IcedID malware. The targets are asked to log in using their Google accounts to view the content. After logging, an archive containing a heavily obfuscated .js-based downloader is downloaded on their computers. An IcedID payload and a Cobalt Strike beacon are then downloaded on the compromised device using WScript and Powershell.

“While this specific campaign delivers the IcedID malware, the delivery method can be used to distribute a wide range of other malware, which can in turn introduce other threats to the enterprise,” the Microsoft analysts added.

This was a new threat to me – time to raise the alarm to make sure law firms and businesses are protected from this attack.

Hat tip to Dave Ries.

Sharon D. Nelson, Esq., President, Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
3975 University Drive, Suite 225|Fairfax, VA 22030
Email:  Phone: 703-359-0700
Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
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