FIN7 Evolution and the Phishing LNK
released on 2017-04-24 @ 03:57:22 PM
FIN7 is a financially-motivated threat group that has been associated with malicious operations dating back to late 2015. FIN7 is referred to by many vendors as “Carbanak Group”, although we do not equate all usage of the CARBANAK backdoor with FIN7. FireEye recently observed a FIN7 spear phishing campaign targeting personnel involved with United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings at various organizations.
In a newly-identified campaign, FIN7 modified their phishing techniques to implement unique infection and persistence mechanisms. FIN7 has moved away from weaponized Microsoft Office macros in order to evade detection. This round of FIN7 phishing lures implements hidden shortcut files (LNK files) to initiate the infection and VBScript functionality launched by mshta.exe to infect the victim.