An ongoing phishing campaign delivering fake Office 365 password expiration reports has managed to compromise tens of C-Suite email accounts to date, according to a warning from anti-malware vendor Trend Micro.
Targeting organizations in finance, government, manufacturing, real estate, and technology sectors, the campaign has claimed victims in Japan, the United States, U.K., Canada, Australia, and several European countries.
To date, more than 300 unique compromised URLs were identified, along with 70 e-mail addresses from eight websites. The phishers were able to compromise 40 legitimate email addresses of CEOs, directors, company founders, and owners, as well as those of other enterprise employees.
As lures, the attackers used fake Office 365 password expiration reports, requesting the victim to click on an embedded link that would allegedly allow them to continue using the same password. However, once the potential victim clicks on the “Keep Password” option, they are taken to the phishing page.
Compromised infrastructure and stolen credentials are abused to host phishing pages and target more victims.
As part of the attack, the hackers used a phishing kit that was first detailed last year, when used in similar attacks leveraging fake Microsoft login pages. Available for purchase, the kit allows cybercriminals to validate stolen credentials.
Trend Micro also discovered that cybercriminals are advertising stolen credentials for Office 365 accounts of CEOs, chief financial officers (CFOs), and employees in the finance department, among others.
“Those posts were seen in multiple English- and Russian-speaking forums, including an underground forum that seemingly matched with another user’s advertisement. Notably, all posts on the Russian-speaking forums were done in English and using recently registered accounts,” Trend Micro phishers target suite office password expiration reports
