Educause Security Discussion mailing list archives

Re: Recent Phishing Uptick


From: Peter Setlak <psetlak () COLGATE EDU>
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2014 19:13:08 -0500

Bob,

Thanks for sharing the link. We actually got two since Monday that were
reported to us. The links went to:

http://www.ajir.com.br/keke/boxser/colboxfix/ - this is the nasty one with
the screen-scrape and banner...
http://colgateedu.webs.com/ & http://emailcolgateedu.webs.com/ on the same
day...

And I spoke too soon. We no longer see the VPN service banging at our
accounts but the Nigerian IPs are still coming at us...

- Peter


On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 6:41 PM, Bob Bayn <bob.bayn () usu edu> wrote:

 If the message targets your institution by name and provides a link that
looks like your real login pages, then I think the risk is high that they
are going after something like Direct Deposit changes for the victim
employees.   If they get a victim they login FAST with the credentials they
just got and they change the bank code so the next paycheck goes to them.
They also move the deposit out of their account to other places quickly.

See the report about our victimization this way, at:

http://it.usu.edu/computer-security/computer-security-threats/articleID=23694


 Bob Bayn         SER 301         (435)797-2396       IT Security Team
Office of Information Technology,                   Utah State University
    Do you know the "Skeptical Hover Technique" and
    how to tell where a web link really goes?  See:
   https://it.usu.edu/computer-security/computer-security-threats/articleID=23737

  ------------------------------
*From:* The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv [
SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] on behalf of Peter Setlak [
psetlak () COLGATE EDU]
*Sent:* Wednesday, February 19, 2014 4:15 PM
*To:* SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
*Subject:* [SECURITY] Recent Phishing Uptick

  Over the past few weeks we saw a dramatic increase in the level and
sophistication of phishing against our domain. The phishers not only used
compromised accounts from other Universities but from our own as well. They
also copied some images from our main website as well as screen-scraped our
accounts-reset page.

 There seem to have been two different campaigns going; one more
sophisticated than the other.

 They only sent emails at night or early morning, none were sent to my
inbox (security admin).

 We use Google Apps and of course, they were of no real help.

 I was able to track down the logins from an IP range owned by Spotflux
VPN services (spotflux.com). The IP range was 162.210.196.160-175.

 We also saw logins from a Nigerian IP range (41.203.69.x).

 After contacting their support, one of their techs was able to correlate
some information and found 142 different machines in the Nigerian IP range
was using their VPN service. He null-routed them and it has been a few
hours but we have not seen any logins since.

 Has anyone else seen this uptick in phishing?
Has anyone else seen these IP ranges knocking at their doors?
Has anyone else seen this scenario before?
Does anyone have suggestions for working with Google to get better
reporting and options?

 I would really like to see the ability to do two things through Google:

 1. Deny certain IP ranges from successfully authenticating into our
domain. Obviously, Google has to allow all users from anywhere use their
services; if I could set our App domain to automatically log someone out if
they logged-in from a certain IP range, that would be very helpful. We have
no students in Nigeria (currently).

 2. Pull an email from users' inboxes before they respond. In this case,
perhaps the first 15 users in my domain might see and click on the email -
hopefully at least one sends it to ITS. Then, we could pull that email from
the remaining users' inboxes before they ever get a chance to open it.

 Perhaps there is something Google offers or a Google-integrated
third-party offers that would allow me to do this?

 --
Thank you,

Peter J. Setlak
Network Security Analyst, GSEC, GLEG, GCPM
Colgate University
---
psetlak () colgate edu
(315) 228-7151
Case-Geyer 450
skype: petersetlak

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-- 
Thank you,

Peter J. Setlak
Network Security Analyst, GSEC, GLEG, GCPM
Colgate University
---
psetlak () colgate edu
(315) 228-7151
Case-Geyer 450
skype: petersetlak

Think *Green!* Please consider the environment before printing this email.


*Engage with Colgate University: *
News blog <http://blogs.colgate.edu/>,
Twitter<https://twitter.com/#%21/colgateuniv>
, Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/colgateuniversity>,
Google+<https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/113333907606560373469/>
, Delicious <http://www.delicious.com/colgatenewsmakers>,
YouTube<http://www.youtube.com/cuatchannel13>
, Flickr <http://www.flickr.com/photos/colgateuniversity/>,
Pinterest<http://pinterest.com/colgateuniv/>
, LinkedIn <http://www.linkedin.com/company/colgate-university/>

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