The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in unison with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) published an advisory on Wednesday to warn organizations of ongoing TrickBot attacks despite in October multiple security firms dismantled their C2 infrastructure in a joint operation.
In their joint advisory, two agencies disclosed that a sophisticated group of cybercrime actors is leveraging a traffic infringement phishing scheme to lure victims into installing the Trickbot malware.
TrickBot was initially observed in 2016, it is believed to be designed by the threat actors behind the Dyre Trojan. TrickBot has become one of the most prevalent families out there, entrapping machines into a botnet that was being offered under a malware-as-a-service model to both nation-states and cybercrime groups.
“The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have observed continued targeting through spear phishing campaigns using TrickBot malware in North America. A sophisticated group of cybercrime actors is luring victims, via phishing emails, with a traffic infringement phishing scheme to download TrickBot,” the joint advisory reads.
In October 2020, Microsoft revealed that it had disrupted the infrastructure behind TrickBot, taking most of it down. However, the malware survived the takedown attempt and came back stronger, with several new updates that protected against similar attempts. The recent attacks come as a confirmation to the same, that TrickBot’s operators were able to restore their malicious operations.
“CISA and FBI are aware of recent attacks that use phishing emails, claiming to contain proof of a traffic violation to steal sensitive information. The phishing emails contain links that redirect to a website hosted on a compromised server that prompts the victim to click on photo proof of their traffic violation. In clicking the photo, the victim unknowingly downloads a malicious JavaScript file that, when opened, automatically communicates with the malicious actor’s command and control (C2) server to download Trickbot to the victim’s system,” the advisory further stated.
