Hackers are compromising online banking and social media users in a man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack campaign that involves posing as major organizations – and they are doing it without setting off alerts, according to researchers with PhishLabs.
More than 70 recognizable financial organizations around the globe have been targeted so far in the campaign, according to PhishLabs research, which adds that attackers posed as more than 25 other major websites for the purposes of gathering credentials, including social media and email.
The attack begins as many do – with spam.
The PhishLabs researchers observed spam emails containing RTF files – named ‘Authorization Form,’ or something similar, to lure the user into opening it – that are actually backdoor Remote Administration Tools (RAT) that surreptitiously execute upon being clicked.
Upon execution, the malware reconfigures the DNS settings on the infected PC so that it uses the DNS server controlled by the hacker, Don Jackson, director of threat intelligence with PhishLabs, wrote in a Wednesday post.