FIN7 targets American automaker’s IT staff in phishing attacks

FIN7 targets American automaker’s IT staff in phishing attacks

April 17, 2024 at 04:44PM

FIN7 targeted a U.S. car maker with spear-phishing emails to infect IT systems with the Anunak backdoor. The attack involved living-off-the-land binaries, scripts, and libraries and relied on a malicious URL impersonating legitimate software. The attack did not spread beyond the initial infected system. BlackBerry recommends defenses including MFA, training, and baseline security measures.

Key takeaways from the meeting notes are as follows:

1. FIN7, a financially motivated threat actor, targeted a large U.S. car maker using spear-phishing emails to infect systems with the Anunak backdoor.

2. The attack relied on living-off-the-land binaries, scripts, and libraries (LoLBins) and focused on high-level privileged targets through links to a malicious URL impersonating the legitimate Advanced IP Scanner tool.

3. The attack chain involved the use of fake websites, malicious executables, multi-stage processes, and specific malware tools such as Anunak/Carbanak, Loadout, Griffon, PowerPlant, and Diceloader.

4. The victim organization was described as “a large multinational automotive manufacturer based in the U.S.” but was not explicitly named.

5. FIN7 has transitioned to targeting larger organizations with ransomware as the typical final payload, in line with the ability of larger organizations to pay larger ransoms.

6. The attack failed to spread beyond the initial infected system, and recommendations were made to defend against phishing through proper training, implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA), using strong and unique passwords, keeping software updated, monitoring for suspicious behavior, and adding advanced email filtering solutions.

These takeaways summarize the key points discussed in the meeting notes related to the FIN7 attack on the U.S. car maker.

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