Examining IRS Notification Letter SPAM
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
A forensicator lives on the 10th floor of a building. Every morning he rides down the elevator to the ground floor and leaves the building to go to his forensic lab. Every night he comes home after spending the day finding evil and gets on the elevator. If it was raining then he takes the elevator to the 10th floor. If the weather is good then he takes the elevator to the 7th floor and walks to the 10th floor using the stairs. Why does he do this?
The forensicator in the elevator is an analogy to a malware infected system. Trying to answer the above riddle cannot be done without looking at the man in his environment (the building). Picturing the forensicator in the building and everything that is in the elevator will shed light on to question of why he takes the stairs. This is similar to answering the question of how malware infected a system. The question can’t be answered without looking at the malware in its environment (the affected system) and examining the other activity on the system around the time the malware appeared. Take the antivirus write-ups as an example. The majority of the write-ups (I’ve read) analyze the malware outside of the environment where it was located. As a result, the write-ups provide vague information on the initial infection vector used such as the statement “distributed through spam campaigns and drive-by downloads, though given its versatility, other vectors may also be utilized”. The description doesn’t shed much light on how a specific system became infected since pretty much all of the bases are covered (SPAM, drive-bys, or some other method). If you have ever wondered what the artifacts are of malware being delivered through SPAM then the rest of this article will be of interest.
Someone was nice enough to send me a SPAM email last month (sarcasm doesn’t come off the some way as the spoken word). The SPAM was a mass mailing so I was probably just one recipient out of thousands but at least the email gave me something to analyze. The examination of this email will first explain the user’s actions followed by the DFIR practitioner’s examination.
Accessing Email
User Perspective
The user fires up a web browser to check their email. Internet Explorer loads the home page before the user navigates to Yahoo email. A few emails are checked before the user comes across the message below.
The user overlooks the indications that the email is SPAM such as the misspellings, punctuation errors, and even a run-on sentence (see the picture below to see what was missed). They proceed to read the notification letter alerting them to some kind of issue with their tax return.
DFIR Perspective
The forensicator was slowly making their way through a system timeline when there was activity involving Internet Explorer. There were modifications made to few Internet Explorer folders in the Administrator user account’s profile and the user account visited a Microsoft’s webpage.
After weeding through all of the web activity related to the Microsoft webpage he noticed the user went to Yahoo’s webpage and accessed their webmail.
The browser history and cache showed that the user spent some time using Yahoo email.
Opening the Email Attachment
User Perspective
Worried there might be an issue with their tax return the user decides to open the email attachment. The user felt more comfortable opening the attachment since Norton Antivirus indicated it was virus free.
The attachment doesn’t initially open a document but instead opens a new window showing a file with the name IRS document.exe. Even though file extensions weren’t hidden by Windows Explorer the user didn’t notice the exe extension since they were too distracted worrying about not receiving their tax refund.
DFIR Perspective
The Internet activity indicated the user was still accessing their Yahoo email when an entry at 06/20/2011 22:10:00 showed the user downloading a zip file.
The file IRS%20document[1].zip was created in the folder \Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\M20M2OXX\ one second after the browser entry made a reference to a zip file in Yahoo email.
Aftermath of Accessing Email Message
User perspective
The user double clicks the file named “IRS document.exe” thinking the file contains the list of missing documents but nothing visually occurs. A document doesn’t open, no error messages popup, and the list of missing documents isn’t shown. The user closes the attachment’s Explorer window at 06/20/2011 10:22 and continues surfing the Internet. This is the point in the story where the user perspective ends. The story tried to illustrate how someone could be tricked into opening the attachment in the SPAM email.
DFIR perspective
The forensicator continued to work his timeline when there was a flurry of activity involving executables. The first artifact was a prefetch file for a program - IRS document.exe - (MD5 hash 77065d6545b0226ccf66ce75d5254bfa and link to the VirusTotal report) that was the executable inside of the zip attachment. 10 seconds later the Windows svchost.exe executable ran before two additional malware were dropped on the system. The malware was PUSK3_~1.EXE (MD5 hash 541c25d26e8b1eb2d1a35cd52854650f and link to the VirusTotal report) and tmp75D5.tmp (MD5 hash 4bda47a91bea4ceccc6003a46aeb754d and link to the VirusTotal report). The executable activity is shown in the picture below.
The forensicator tied the execution of the IRS document.exe and pusk3.exe to the administrator account by finding the following information in the account’s MUICache registry key.
C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\Temporary Directory 1 for IRS%20document[1].zip\IRS document.exe (IRS document)
C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\pusk3.exe (ProcFeatures)
The last artifact pointing to a zip file occurred at 06/20/2011 10:22 and it was modifications being made to the HCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\BagMRU registry key. A summary of the information in the BagMRU registry key is provided below.
* Bag: 9
* Registry Key modification Time [UTC]: 06/21/11 02:12:22.734
* Folder Name: IRS%20document[1].zip
* Full Path: Desktop\{CLSID_MyComputer}\C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\M20M2OXX\IRS%20document[1].zip\
Summary
The artifacts of malware being delivered through SPAM consisted of a user accessing email and opening a file around the same time. These artifacts hold true for malware being delivered via email even if the circumstances are different. At one point I examined an infected system which didn’t involve the IRS notification letter SPAM or web email. The activity on the system showed emails were assessed around the time a zip file was opened which happened just before the first piece of malware appeared on the system. All of the activity (and lack of other activity such as a drive-by download) lead me to conclude the malware was the result of a malicious email attachment. The specific artifacts in the examination varied slightly compared to what was discussed in this article but the general overall artifacts (email and file access prior to malware appearing) remained consistent.
Only examining malware from a system may not indicate email was the vehicle used deliver it. This is similar to antivirus write-ups about the analysis of malware which leave out information about how a specific computer became infected. The same line of thinking applies to the well known but slightly modified riddle at the beginning of the post. The riddle can’t be answered by solely analyzing the man outside of his building. Sure the analysis will reveal a lot of information about the man but it won’t explain why he is on the 7th floor of his building. The man needs to be analyzed in his building and the activity that occurred prior to him reaching the 7th floor should be reviewed. Trying to solve the riddle in this manner will reveal the answer of why he walks the stairs from the 7th to the 10th floor. The guy is too short to press the 10th floor elevator button and the highest he can reach - without an umbrella - is the 7th floor button. Like the man in the riddle, the activity on a system preceding the malware should be analyzed to determine if an email, drive-by, or some other means was used for the delivery.
The forensicator in the elevator is an analogy to a malware infected system. Trying to answer the above riddle cannot be done without looking at the man in his environment (the building). Picturing the forensicator in the building and everything that is in the elevator will shed light on to question of why he takes the stairs. This is similar to answering the question of how malware infected a system. The question can’t be answered without looking at the malware in its environment (the affected system) and examining the other activity on the system around the time the malware appeared. Take the antivirus write-ups as an example. The majority of the write-ups (I’ve read) analyze the malware outside of the environment where it was located. As a result, the write-ups provide vague information on the initial infection vector used such as the statement “distributed through spam campaigns and drive-by downloads, though given its versatility, other vectors may also be utilized”. The description doesn’t shed much light on how a specific system became infected since pretty much all of the bases are covered (SPAM, drive-bys, or some other method). If you have ever wondered what the artifacts are of malware being delivered through SPAM then the rest of this article will be of interest.
Someone was nice enough to send me a SPAM email last month (sarcasm doesn’t come off the some way as the spoken word). The SPAM was a mass mailing so I was probably just one recipient out of thousands but at least the email gave me something to analyze. The examination of this email will first explain the user’s actions followed by the DFIR practitioner’s examination.
Accessing Email
User Perspective
The user fires up a web browser to check their email. Internet Explorer loads the home page before the user navigates to Yahoo email. A few emails are checked before the user comes across the message below.
The user overlooks the indications that the email is SPAM such as the misspellings, punctuation errors, and even a run-on sentence (see the picture below to see what was missed). They proceed to read the notification letter alerting them to some kind of issue with their tax return.
DFIR Perspective
The forensicator was slowly making their way through a system timeline when there was activity involving Internet Explorer. There were modifications made to few Internet Explorer folders in the Administrator user account’s profile and the user account visited a Microsoft’s webpage.
After weeding through all of the web activity related to the Microsoft webpage he noticed the user went to Yahoo’s webpage and accessed their webmail.
The browser history and cache showed that the user spent some time using Yahoo email.
Opening the Email Attachment
User Perspective
Worried there might be an issue with their tax return the user decides to open the email attachment. The user felt more comfortable opening the attachment since Norton Antivirus indicated it was virus free.
The attachment doesn’t initially open a document but instead opens a new window showing a file with the name IRS document.exe. Even though file extensions weren’t hidden by Windows Explorer the user didn’t notice the exe extension since they were too distracted worrying about not receiving their tax refund.
DFIR Perspective
The Internet activity indicated the user was still accessing their Yahoo email when an entry at 06/20/2011 22:10:00 showed the user downloading a zip file.
The file IRS%20document[1].zip was created in the folder \Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\M20M2OXX\ one second after the browser entry made a reference to a zip file in Yahoo email.
Aftermath of Accessing Email Message
User perspective
The user double clicks the file named “IRS document.exe” thinking the file contains the list of missing documents but nothing visually occurs. A document doesn’t open, no error messages popup, and the list of missing documents isn’t shown. The user closes the attachment’s Explorer window at 06/20/2011 10:22 and continues surfing the Internet. This is the point in the story where the user perspective ends. The story tried to illustrate how someone could be tricked into opening the attachment in the SPAM email.
DFIR perspective
The forensicator continued to work his timeline when there was a flurry of activity involving executables. The first artifact was a prefetch file for a program - IRS document.exe - (MD5 hash 77065d6545b0226ccf66ce75d5254bfa and link to the VirusTotal report) that was the executable inside of the zip attachment. 10 seconds later the Windows svchost.exe executable ran before two additional malware were dropped on the system. The malware was PUSK3_~1.EXE (MD5 hash 541c25d26e8b1eb2d1a35cd52854650f and link to the VirusTotal report) and tmp75D5.tmp (MD5 hash 4bda47a91bea4ceccc6003a46aeb754d and link to the VirusTotal report). The executable activity is shown in the picture below.
The forensicator tied the execution of the IRS document.exe and pusk3.exe to the administrator account by finding the following information in the account’s MUICache registry key.
C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\Temporary Directory 1 for IRS%20document[1].zip\IRS document.exe (IRS document)
C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\pusk3.exe (ProcFeatures)
The last artifact pointing to a zip file occurred at 06/20/2011 10:22 and it was modifications being made to the HCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\BagMRU registry key. A summary of the information in the BagMRU registry key is provided below.
* Bag: 9
* Registry Key modification Time [UTC]: 06/21/11 02:12:22.734
* Folder Name: IRS%20document[1].zip
* Full Path: Desktop\{CLSID_MyComputer}\C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\M20M2OXX\IRS%20document[1].zip\
Summary
The artifacts of malware being delivered through SPAM consisted of a user accessing email and opening a file around the same time. These artifacts hold true for malware being delivered via email even if the circumstances are different. At one point I examined an infected system which didn’t involve the IRS notification letter SPAM or web email. The activity on the system showed emails were assessed around the time a zip file was opened which happened just before the first piece of malware appeared on the system. All of the activity (and lack of other activity such as a drive-by download) lead me to conclude the malware was the result of a malicious email attachment. The specific artifacts in the examination varied slightly compared to what was discussed in this article but the general overall artifacts (email and file access prior to malware appearing) remained consistent.
Only examining malware from a system may not indicate email was the vehicle used deliver it. This is similar to antivirus write-ups about the analysis of malware which leave out information about how a specific computer became infected. The same line of thinking applies to the well known but slightly modified riddle at the beginning of the post. The riddle can’t be answered by solely analyzing the man outside of his building. Sure the analysis will reveal a lot of information about the man but it won’t explain why he is on the 7th floor of his building. The man needs to be analyzed in his building and the activity that occurred prior to him reaching the 7th floor should be reviewed. Trying to solve the riddle in this manner will reveal the answer of why he walks the stairs from the 7th to the 10th floor. The guy is too short to press the 10th floor elevator button and the highest he can reach - without an umbrella - is the 7th floor button. Like the man in the riddle, the activity on a system preceding the malware should be analyzed to determine if an email, drive-by, or some other means was used for the delivery.
Labels:
delivery artifacts,
email,
malware analysis,
registry,
scams,
spam
Posts
Nice walk through the process, enjoyed the post!
Frank
Corey. You've just made my day brighter! Thank you very much for your sharing. Especially for the prefect analysis posts. It really mean a lot for me mate!