A group of phishing criminals called Silver Terrier originating from Nigeria was known to change its tactics to improve its success rate on getting more victims. The group is not known to conduct sophisticated phishing attacks, and they still heavily rely on email phishing campaigns. However the group seemed to be dedicated to do more and succeed more, therefore they added off-the-shelf malware on top of their already modus mass phishing campaign in their tactics.
Phishing Malware: How and Where?
Apparently the group has access to various malware types such as Remote Access Trojans and information sniffers which were distributed aiming to infect victims and stealing data.
The group has launched off an average of 17,600 spam emails per month while using 15 different families of malware according to the researchers at Palo Alto Networks who have been keen on tracking them. The group’s activities were interpreted to have increased by 45 percent from 2016.
Let’s admit that it is cheap and easy to send malicious emails, but the real effort lies on how attentive the malware authors are when it comes to materializing their attacks.
The tools and tactics utilized by SilverTerrier are not the best of technology or methods but what makes them successful is their opportunistic mindset and methods. Vulnerable victims are those businesses that do not employ anti-phishing methods nor even has phishing intelligence , Anti Malware programs to begin with.
Common contents in the phishing emails that are distributed focus on the subject of fake shipping notifications, invoices, requests for quotes and purchase orders.
One thing that is surely surprising is the origin of the malware in the group’s inventory came from the DarkWeb where malware can easily be sold and purchased through Darkweb Marketplaces.
Off-The-Shelf Malware is like a generic disease which can easily be detected by software security i.e anti malware programs, with the success of the group SilverTerrier, then the awareness of the victims can be attributed to it.
