Steam Phishing: popular as ever

A month or so ago a friend of mine received the following message on Steam from someone in their Friends list (they were already friends):

Figure 1 - 'this is for you' 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The two links are different and refer to a Gift Card on Steam's community platform. As you might have noticed, the domain is not related to Steam at all, but rather is an attempt at phishing.

 The URLs are:

stermcormmunity[.]com/gift-card/
steamcoummuniity[.]com/gift-card/

The differences are subtle enough that you may just miss it. When you click on the link, you are redirected to a 'Summer Gift Marathon'.

Figure 2 - Fake Steam website

Once you log in to the fake Steam website, your credentials are stolen and will be used to spread more phishing, likely steal your inventory items and so on.

Other phishing sites related to this campaign are:

steam-pubgvn[.]top
steamauthconnection[.]store
steamcommnunity[.]com
steamcommunitay[.]com
steamcommunitfy[.]com
steamcommunitihy[.]icu
steamcommunitiny[.]com
steamcommunitweya[.]art
steamcommunl1ty[.]com
steamcommunllity[.]com
steamcommunty[.]ru
steamcommununity[.]cam
steamcommunutiy[.]com
steamcomnunityty[.]com
steamcomnunlity[.]com
steamcomnuty[.]com
steamcomrnnunlty[.]com
steamcomun1ty[.]com
steamcomuniry[.]com
steamconmunify[.]com
steamconnection[.]store
steamcornmunlty[.]ru
steamcornrnunlty[.]ru
steamlinks-short[.]com
stearncommunjty[.]com
stearncommunnity[.]com
stearncomnunity[.]com
stearncornnunity[.]com
steeamcommunitty[.]com
unevwsteeamcommunitty[.]com 

New ones do pop up from time to time, so stay vigilant. 

Tips  

Only log in on the legitimate Steam community website, this being https://steamcommunity.com/. An extra tip is to bookmark the legitimate site, so even if you do get a message like this, you can go straight to your bookmark and search what you need from there.

 

If someone new tries to add you as a Friend and immediately sends a message like the above, alarm bells should start ringing.

 

If someone already on your Friends list suddenly sends a random message with an even more random link out of the blue, cue the alarm bells again. 

 

If you want to check the website out in a safe manner, then you can use URLscan.io, which will give you a verdict of the website as well as an image preview. In addition, you can use VirusTotal to review a website's reputation.

 

Note that an 'all clean' does not necessarily mean it is. Caution above all! 

 

Follow Steam's Account Security Recommendations to stay safe.

 

 

Microsoft Word and Sandboxes

Today's post is a brief one on some Microsoft Word and sandbox detection / discovery / fun.

Collect user name from Microsoft Office

Most sandboxes will trigger somehow or something if a tool or malware tries to collect system information or user information. But what if we collect the user name via the registry and more specifically, what user info Microsoft Office sees?

This information is stored in the Current User hive, Software\Microsoft\Office\Common\UserInfo.

10-second code and we can whip up:

 

 

 

 

Text form:

$userName = (Get-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Office\Common\UserInfo").UserName

Start-Process -FilePath "notepad.exe" -ArgumentList $userName

 

And we get something like:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and the process tree:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some sandboxes had a username of "Admin", "admin" or a completely random name. 

 

In short, it's a potential technique for more stealth reconaissance that may not trigger a sandbox or detection mechanism.

Run a Microsoft Word doc with.. .asd extension

When Microsoft Word crashes, it will (usually) attempt to create a backup copy of all your opened documents. It typically saves these backups as .wbk (Word Backup) or .asd (Autosave or Autorecover) files.

These will be saved in one of these directories in normal circumstances:

• C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Word
• C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word
  
• C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Temp
• C:\Users\USERNAME\\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\UnsavedFiles

Most sandboxes however will be able to open the file just fine, but not all...:

 

 

 

 

I haven't seen much use of actual .asd files, likely as the documents will need to be loaded from one of the above directories, however... after crafting your malicious document, you can simply rename it from badfile.docx to badfile.asd, and it will run fine.

It seems at least 1 actor has used an .asd extension before, as reported on by Didier Stevens:

https://isc.sans.edu/diary/CrowdStrike+Outage+Themed+Maldoc/31116

In short, it's another way of evading sandboxes or other potential detection mechanisms thay may not support these .asd or .wbk extensions or even consider them harmless.

New North Korean based backdoor packs a punch

 

In recent months, North Korean based threat actors have been ramping up attack campaigns in order to achieve a myriad of their objectives, whether it be financial gain or with espionage purposes in mind. The North Korean cluster of attack groups is peculiar seeing there is quite some overlap with one another, and it is not always straightforward to attribute a specific campaign to a specific threat actor.

In this research paper we analyse a new threat campaign, discovered in late May, and which features multiple layers and ultimately delivers a seemingly new and previously undocumented backdoor.

The threat campaign is specifically focused on Aerospace and Defense companies: sectors appealing to multiple threat actors, but of particular interest to North Korean threat groups in other recent campaigns. We have named this threat campaign “Niki” as it refers to the potential malware developer(s).

Read the report here: https://cyberarmor.tech/new-north-korean-based-backdoor-packs-a-punch/

Direct link to report, PDF: https://cyberarmor.tech/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/New-North-Korean-based-backdoor-packs-a-punch.pdf