Analysis of a phishing campaign targeting thousands of government contractors, dubbed “Operation Uncle Sam,” takes advantage of some sophisticated steps to avoid detection.
Security analysts at Perception Point have identified a relatively simple phishing scam that uses some interesting methods to keep the good guys from noticing.
The scam is simple: send an email to government contractors posing as an official procurement notice from the US Department of Energy inviting recipients to submit a bid for a federal project.
Source: PerceptionPoint
Those that click are taken to a spoofed General Services Administration (GSA) website, where – through a series of actions – the victims credentials are stolen.
What makes this an interesting attack is the detail of how they evade detection:
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 is abused to send out thousands of emails by legitimately creating subdomains (which customers can do) to act as the sender
- The spoofed GSA website includes links and search options that all lead to the legitimate GSA site, adding to the spoofed site’s credibility
- A CAPTCHA page is used to keep security solutions out
These kinds of specific details become the things we need users enrolled in security awareness training to be aware of – in essence, just because it looks legitimate and security solutions didn’t detect something suspicious doesn’t mean it’s not malicious.
This attack demonstrates why organizations need their users to participate in cybersecurity, solutions won’t always detect the bad guy, but users who pay attention will.
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