Hurricane Michael phishing schemes leverage Azure blob storage to rake in credentials

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Overview

As is often the case during major events that generate significant public attention, Proofpoint researchers observed a number of phishing lures capitalizing on Hurricane Michael. However, while phishing schemes related to natural disasters often attempt to steal credit card numbers used for fake donations or steal funds directly via fraudulent donations, many of these recent campaigns were focused on webmail credential theft. Interestingly, the campaigns also leveraged blob storage on Microsoft Azure infrastructure to inexpensively host phishing templates.

Phishing campaigns

Many of the recent phishing campaigns with Hurricane Michael lures used PDF documents attached to email. They include file names such as:

  • florida hurricane michael emergency and recovery procurement.pdf
  • florida hurricane michael emergency and disaster recovery procurement.pdf
  • vdot hurricane michael emergency and recovery procurements.pdf

As shown in Figures 1 and 2, the lures are fairly generic, relying on embedded links and social engineering to entice recipients to click. Both figures show stolen branding for actual government agencies.

Figure 1: A PDF lure with an embedded link and stolen branding for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet

Figure 2: Another PDF lure with an embedded link and stolen branding for the Virginia Department of Transportation

Clicking on the linked icons opens a bit.ly link, a secondary link shortener, and then the final link to the phishing landing page.

The clickthrough rates appear to be relatively low for these links, with just over 500 total clicks for the three URLs we observed associated with this campaign (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Statistics for clickthroughs on the initial links from PDFs associated with these phishing campaigns

Despite the overall low click rates, however, the final URLs are of interest:

  • https:[//]dropboxembright19604.blob.core.windows[.]net
  • https:[//]onedriveunfragrant26.blob.core.windows[.]net
  • https:[//]onedrivechowry495462.blob.core.windows[.]net

These are HTTPS-only phishing pages hosted on official windows[.]net domains. We have observed phishing pages hosted using Microsoft Azure blob storage since August of this year. The tactic is inexpensive and especially effective for scams purporting to be legitimate Microsoft services.

The SSL/TLS certificate commonName field present in this case is a wildcard certificate that cannot be used as an effective means of detection, as seen in Figure 4. There are other ways to detect the malicious activity, such as DNS requests by inspecting the TLS server name indication.

Figure 4: Wildcard certificate issued for all domains (good and bad) on this domain

Some other recently observed phishing domains abusing Microsoft Azure blob hosting include:

  • Oct 14 2018     dropboxmarling951049.blob.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 12 2018     cs7a779f8678a3dx443cxbf5.blob.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 12 2018     onedrivedocument3.z13.web.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 11 2018     krdas56-secondary.z19.web.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 11 2018     excelouttravel858824.blob.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 11 2018     onedrivemyliobatoid4.blob.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 11 2018     onedrivemoton8532961.blob.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 11 2018     godaddyreimplant9949.blob.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 11 2018     onedrivedocs3.z13.web.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 11 2018     onedrivedocument0.z13.web.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 11 2018     onedrivebroadwayite7.blob.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 10 2018     office365totalized87.blob.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 10 2018     darkcloud.z13.web.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 10 2018     ducosignsurahs721013.blob.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 10 2018     dropboxsphingurus894.blob.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 10 2018     adobeadvanceable4826.blob.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 10 2018     onedriveexactas84338.blob.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 9 2018       henricocountyassiste.blob.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 9 2018       office365parasyphilo.blob.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 9 2018       office365funguses335.blob.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 9 2018       adobeinthralls778398.blob.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 9 2018       onedrivenonalphabeti.blob.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 9 2018       ducosignunkept514717.blob.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 9 2018       onedriveunfragrant26.blob.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 9 2018       onedrivesuiogothic82.blob.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 9 2018       godaddybeautifier270.blob.core.windows[.]net
  • Oct 8 2018       dropboxovertalkative.blob.core.windows[.]net

The resulting phishing landing page is also a relatively generic template that attempts to trick victims into giving away their webmail credentials for the promised hurricane-related document.

Figure 5: Phishing landing page abusing Microsoft Azure blog hosting

We detected several other landings related to this threat abusing Microsoft azure blob hosting. Examples of these pages that also abuse other frequently phished brands appear in Figures 6-9.

Figure 6: A phishing landing page abusing similar infrastructure and stolen branding for email credential theft

Figure 7: A phishing landing page abusing similar infrastructure and stolen branding for Microsoft Office 365 credential theft

Figure 8: A phishing landing page abusing similar infrastructure and stolen Dropbox branding for email credential theft

Figure 9: A phishing landing page abusing similar infrastructure and stolen Docusign branding for email credential theft

Conclusion

Fraud and scams always appear around major events, whether the Olympics, presidential races, or hurricanes. These events serve as lures for both related and unrelated phishing, fraudulent transactions, and straight theft. In this case, the phishing schemes stand out because the threat actors are directing recipients to credential theft pages for both corporate and personal email rather than credit card or financial theft. This is consistent with dramatic increases we have observed recently in corporate credential phishing. However, this should also serve as a warning for recipients who are accustomed to entering email credentials to log into multiple services. Threat actors are capitalizing on both this desensitization and our desire to do good. While none of these are new tactics on their own, the combination is of interest to defenders and potential victims. Those wishing to make charitable donations or seeking assistance should go directly to websites associated with known disaster relief organizations and should never enter webmail or social media credentials to enable donations.

ET OPEN IDS Signatures:

2026486: DNS Lookup for Possible Common Brand Phishing Hosted on Legitimate Windows Service

2026487: Request for Possible Common Brand Phishing Hosted on Legitimate Windows Service