Global Hunt for Nigerian Cyber Criminal Spreading Malware

A Nigerian working alone around Abuja has stirred a global hunt as he orchestrated numerous malware infection campaigns targeting more than 4,000 organisations globally over the past four months, a cyber security company has claimed.

www.Securityweek.com quoting Check Point security researchers said the attacks targeted various companies and industries such as oil and gas, manufacturing, banking, and construction, in an attempt to steal data and commit fraud.

Many of the companies are leading international names and some have had their defences breached by the attacks, the security researchers reveal.

According to Check Point, at least a dozen companies confirmed they have been infected during the campaign, including a marine and energy solutions company in Croatia, a transportation company in Abu Dhabi, a mining company in Egypt, a construction company in Dubai, an oil and gas firm in Kuwait, and a construction organisation in Germany.

Despite the large-scale campaign, behind it is not an expert gang of cybercriminals or a nation state actor, but “a relatively unskilled man in his mid-20s, operating from a location near the capital of Nigeria,” Check Point discovered.

Working on his own, the Nigerian uses fraudulent emails seemingly coming from oil and gas giant, Saudi Aramco, the world’s second largest daily oil producer. The phishing messages target financial departments within companies in an attempt to trick employees into revealing company bank details or into opening a malware-infected attachment.

The malware used in these attacks includes NetWire, a remote access Trojan that provides its operator with full control over infected machines, and Hawkeye, a software for logging key strokes (malware already associated with Nigerian cybercriminals).

The attacks eventually resulted in a total of 14 successful infections. The cybercriminal ended up earning thousands of dollars in the process, the researchers said.

Despite showing a low level of cyber-skills, using crude and unsophisticated fraudulent emails, with almost no research or social engineering involved in creating them, the attacker was successful in his attempts.

The attacker used generic email titles, phrased as “Dear Sir/Ms,” sent the same email to numerous targets, “all in blind carbon copy, urging victims to send back banking details, perhaps for future scams”. He sent the emails from email addresses sale. cement_till_tw@yahoo.com, and cciticarinternational@yahoo.com.

The fraudster used old, generic and readily available online malware, as well as freeware to ‘scrape’ email addresses from corporate websites and used them as targets for his campaigns.

“The fact that the campaign was still effective, despite using only basic cyber-criminal techniques, highlights just how much of a problem these business email compromise (BEC) attacks have become,” Check Point said.

Since uncovering the campaign and establishing its origins, Check Point’s research team has notified law enforcement authorities in Nigeria and internationally and shared its findings with them.

Check Point said the Nigerian in his 20s operates social media accounts, where he uses the motto: “get rich or die trying”.

Last year, the FBI revealed that losses caused by BEC scams exceeded $3.1 billion. Victims are estimated to lose between $25,000 and $75,000 on average, per attack. However, it’s not only financial losses that victims should be concerned about, but also the fact that “the malware used by the criminal to infect organisations gives remote control over infected machines, and can perform key-logging functions. This enables harvesting of a variety of information from infected machines, such as details on the companies’ operations, assets and intellectual property.”

Such details could be worth much more than the thousands of dollars obtained by fraud, Check Point said.

Another alarming aspect was that some of the targets are energy and infrastructure companies, which the unsophisticated cybercriminal was able to easily breach. Not only was the attacker able to compromise the networks of several large organisations, but he also managed to distribute his malware globally and remain under the radar for a long while.

“This highlights the need for all organisations to improve their security to protect against phishing and business email compromise scams, and to educate their employees to be cautious about opening emails, even from companies or individuals that they recognise,” Check Point said.