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Monday, 23 January 2017

WARNING: pmacademyusa.org / "Project Management Academy USA"

For the past six years I have been following the exploits of Patchree "Patty" Patchrint and Anthony Christopher Jones who claim to run a series of seminars on project management and grant writing. Umm.. and failed restaurants in Los Angeles. I'm not going to repeat all of the information in this post, I advise you to read the whole story.

This latest scheme is a quite snazzy-looking website at  www.pmacademyusa.org called "Project Management Academy USA".

The website may look professional, but it is simply done using the WIX website builder:


You'll notice that the site supplies no information at all about who runs it. However a useful tip alerted me to the site, which is basically a more glitzy version of the Institute of Project Management America from a few years back, including this lazy example of copypasta:

About Project Management Academy USA
At Project Management Academy USA, our programs are led by practitioners-working professionals who are experts in the process of maximizing results using professional project management practices. Modern industry needs results driven professionals who are focused on a disciplined dedication to effective project management from initiation to closing. We strive to combine real-world scenarios, actual case-studies, with the knowledge provided by PMI and academic foundations to create certified project managers who are prepared for further certification and credential. Our programs are ultra-foundational, meaning they ensure attainment of the universal basics of project management, prepare participants for certification exams, and provide the advantage of our mastery components, which are unique to our programs and are followed by a Masters designation.
They currently advertise courses running in the following locations:
January 17-20, 2017
University of Southern California
8:00am to 5:00pm

February 21-24, 2017
University of Miami
8:00am to 5:00pm

February 28 - March 3, 2017
University of Texas at Austin
8:00am to 5:00pm

March 21-24, 2017
University of California Berkeley
8:00am to 5:00pm

March 28-31, 2017
University of Chicago
8:00am to 5:00pm
Funnily enough, the venue seems to be changed at the last minute from the prestigious university it was advertised at to some other location in the rough vicinity. And also, at the last moment the person who was meant to be teaching the course is substituted at the last moment for someone who has to fill in and mysteriously seems to have problems getting paid (if this is you then please add a comment below).

If you have doubts about the quality of these causes, I urge you to read the posts and especially the comments that go with them. Those are not my words, but the words of the people unfortunate enough to either pay for a course or who turn up to teach.


Thursday, 19 January 2017

Malware spam: "The Insolvency Service" / "Investigations Inquiry Notification" / chucktowncheckin.com / chapelnash.com

This malware spam in unusual in many respects. The payload may be some sort of ransomware [UPDATE: this appears to be Cerber].

From: The Insolvency Service [mailto:service@chucktowncheckin.com]
Sent: 19 January 2017 12:22
Subject: EGY 318NHAR12 - Investigations Inquiry Notification



Company Investigations Inquiry
Informing You that we have received appeal regarding your company which indicates corporate misconduct.
Your Inquiry Number: 84725UPTN583
As part of this occasion we have made our own background investigation and if it occurs to be in the public interest, we can apply to the court to wind up the company and stop it trading.
Also if the performance of the director(s) who run the company is questionable enough, we can commence proceedings to disqualify them from governing a limited company for a time span up to 15 years.
FURTHER CASE DATA
The investigation can give us information that we can transmit to another regulatory body that has more suitable powers to deal with any concerns the investigation uncovers.
Help Cookies Contact Terms and conditions Rhestr o Wasanaethau Cymraeg
Built by the Government Digital Service
All content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0, except where otherwise stated   
© Crown copyright

Sample subjects are:

LSV 354EMPU31 -  Investigations Inquiry Reminder
JXI 647TESR39 -  Investigations Inquiry Reminder
SHV 622WYXP68 -  Investigations Inquiry Notice
QPY 661APWZ41 -  Investigations Inquiry Notice
FHF 338SYBV85 -  Investigations Inquiry Notice
EGY 318NHAR12 -  Investigations Inquiry Notification
IZJ 296CNWP92 -  Investigations Inquiry Notice

All the senders I have seen come from the chucktowncheckin.com domain. Furthermore, all of the sending servers are in the same /24:

194.87.216.87
194.87.216.62
194.87.216.40
194.87.216.43
194.87.216.3
194.87.216.7
194.87.216.80

All the servers have names like kvm42.chapelnash.com in a network block controlled by Reg.ru in Russia.

The link in the email goes to some hacked WordPress site or other, then ends up on a subdomain of uk-insolvencydirect.com e.g. 2vo4.uk-insolvencydirect.com/sending_data/in_cgi/bbwp/cases/Inquiry.php - this is a pretty convincing looking page spoofing the UK government, asking for a CAPTCHA to download the files:


Entering the CAPTCHA downloads a ZIP file (e.g. 3d6Zy.zip) containing a malicious Javascript (e.g. Inquiry Details.js) that looks like this [Pastebin].

Hybrid Analysis of the script is rather interesting, not least because it performs NSLOOKUPs against OpenDNS servers (which is a really weird thing to do give that OpenDNS is a security tool).

The script downloads a component from www.studiolegaleabbruzzese.com/wp-content/plugins/urxwhbnw3ez/flight_4832.pdf and then drops an EXE with an MD5 of e403129a69b5dcfff95362738ce8f241 and a detection rate of 5/53.

Narrowing the Hybrid Analysis down to just the dropped EXE, we can see these peculiar OpenDNS requests as the malware tries to reach out to:

soumakereceivedthiswith.ru (176.98.52.157 - FLP Sidorenko Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, Russia)
sectionpermiathefor.ru (151.0.42.255 - Online Technologies, Ukraine)
programuserandussource.ru (does not resolve)
maytermsmodiall.ru (does not resolve)

It isn't exactly clear what the malware does, but you can bet it is Nothing Good™.

I recommend that you block email traffic from:

194.87.216.0/24

and block web traffic to

uk-insolvencydirect.com
studiolegaleabbruzzese.com
176.98.52.157
151.0.42.255



Thursday, 12 January 2017

Scam: 01254522444, the fake BT engineer and 888DCA60-FC0A-11CF-8F0F-00C04FD7D062

In the past few weeks I have seen a huge upsurge in the number of Indian tech support scammers ringing, both at home and my place of work. (For example.. this).

One common trick they use revolves around this hexadecimal number 888DCA60-FC0A-11CF-8F0F-00C04FD7D062. Either it's a signal that hackers are at your PC, or it's your secret router ID that only BT would know.

The conversation goes something like this..

Victim: "But I don't get my internet from BT.."

Scammer: "BT provides all the internet connections for everyone else, including TalkTalk and Virgin Media."

Victim: "How do I know you're from BT?

Scammer: "There is a confidential Router ID that only BT will know. You can verify this to prove that we are BT."

The scammer then talks the victim through pressing -R then CMD (followed by OK) and then ASSOC (followed by RETURN). That simply produces a list of file associations (e.g. to say that .xlsx is an Excel spreadsheet). The line they want you to see is:
.ZFSendToTarget=CLSID\{888DCA60-FC0A-11CF-8F0F-00C04FD7D062}
This is just something to do with how Windows  handles compressed files and folders. All Windows machines should have t his entry, but it looks sufficiently scary about to impress at least some victims.

NEVER GIVE THESE PEOPLE ACCESS TO YOUR PC.

However, if you want to waste their time please do so.. if you work in IT you can probably play a convincingly dumb user. It seems that they will try for up to 40 minutes or so before they give up. Alternatively, say that you have to get your laptop out from somewhere and it is very slow and just put them on hold. Every minute of their time you can waste will stop them targeting other potential victims.

And don't just ignore the call - report it. If you are in the UK you can report this sort of scam to Action Fraud - it will certainly help law enforcement if they have an idea of how many potential victims there are.