Microsoft Warns Of Massive COVID-19 Excel Phishing Attack
The following information comes from our partners at KnowBe4:
Microsoft this week warned about a massive phishing attack that started on May 12. The campaign sends emails that look like they are from the “Johns Hopkins Center”, and they have an Excel attachment that claims to be US deaths caused by the Coronavirus.
If your user opens that infected “Excel doc”, the file downloads a macro and runs the NetSupport Manager Remote Admin Tool. This is actually a legit remote support product, but it can also be used for criminal purposes, specifically to download malware on a targeted device. When installed, it allows the bad guys to gain complete control over the infected machine and execute commands on it remotely.
In a series of tweets, the Microsoft Security Intelligence team outlined how this massive campaign is spreading this tool. The Excel document contains malicious macros, and will prompt the user to ‘Enable Content’. Once clicked, the macros will be executed to download and install the NetSupport Manager client from a remote site.
“The hundreds of unique Excel files in this campaign use highly obfuscated formulas, but all of them connect to the same URL to download the payload. NetSupport Manager is known for being abused by attackers to gain remote access to and run commands on compromised machines,” Microsoft tweeted.
Copeland Buhl, along with our security partners, has the ability to monitor for such an attack before it can get out of hand or go unnoticed for a long period of time. Contact Brent Goedel for more information brent_goedel@copelandbuhl.com or 952-476-7142.