Fake Invoices – Don’t enable document malware!

fake invoices

This week’s IT security alert from Lineal – fake invoices which ask users to run a dangerous piece of code.

The example above comes from a fake Word document emailed with a typical text line, such as ‘Please check this invoice’ or ‘Double check my numbers for me’, to an unsuspecting user.

Upon opening, the document appears to load a popup from Office 2016 prompting the user to ‘Enable Content’ for compatibility purposes, before they can view the detail of the ‘invoice.’

In fact, the display is just an image within the word file, and the ‘Enable Content’ content button instead runs a piece of Visual Basic code downloading unknown malware from the internet.

The scam relies on users’ curiosity at the unusual $1999.00 charge, and upon reaching a user still running an outdated version of Microsoft Office.

 

Several measures can be taken to prevent this kind of attack:

  • Don’t click any popup that doesn’t visibly pop ‘open’ in Microsoft and don’t ‘Enable Content’ you can’t see in a document.
  • Consider an email filtering service like Barracuda – in the above example, Barracuda had recognised this email as malicious and stripped the code from the document before placing it in the correct email inbox for the intended recipient.

 

For IT Security advice and guidance – speak to Lineal today.


Zepto Cryptolocker Alert: Lineal intercepts dangerous zero-day threat with ESET Antivirus

Zepto

Yesterday Lineal’s team successfully rescued a client from a new ‘zero-day’ Cryptolocker Virus which nearly destroyed many of their files.

The dangerous variation of the ‘Zepto’ cryptolocker, only identified online during the last 24 hours, is believed to be a brand new threat originally derived from ‘Locky’ ransomware.

An employee at one of Lineal’s IT support clients recently opened an email containing an infected file – a malicious piece of obfuscated code written in Visual Basic scripting language. The installed Zepto cryptolocker began encrypting the company’s files, readying to demand a heavy ransom.

In a coordinated attack, an outside user also forced access to our client’s server, instructing it to begin sending fake Barclays ‘phishing’ emails, attempting to criminally capture banking details.

Our team caught both threats early, forcefully locking out the intruder in mid-session, identifying the employee who introduced the threat, and quarantining the infection with ESET’s business endpoint security. 

Lineal then notified ESET about Zepto to help with future identification, having avoided the need to restore all the clients files from backup at great disruption.

The landscape of online security threats is rapidly changing, and Cryptolocker variants have spread quickly in recent months.

In this case Lineal’s rapidly responding team and professional security software helped our client dodge the huge potential losses from the security breach – and highlighted how vital it is that organisations of all sizes take proactive steps to protect their IT from hostile intrusion.

 

For IT security advice and support, contact Lineal today.


Cryptolocker Warning from Lineal

 

Cryptolocker Warning: in the past fortnight we’ve seen an increasing number of companies hit by sophisticated cryptolocker viruses.

These dangerous programs, often installed by accident, lock your files over time, encrypting data and eventually demanding victims pay a ransom to retrieve their irreplaceable data.

In all of these cases, security products were installed but they did not protect against the threat. In our experience the only product that is reliably detecting these new threats and offering sufficient protection at this time is ESET. Older, less effective or out of date security products are offering little or no protection against these new cryptolocker variants.

Once affected by a cryptolocker, there is no way to de-encrypt scrambled files without paying the ransom, and users must remove the trojan before recovering recent versions of a file from their backups – highlighting the importance of a regular backup plan for data.

Please don’t be the next one to get caught out – talk to Lineal today about IT security options to ensure your valuable data is protected.