Today (it is still Friday) I received this rather clever variation of the ol’ invoice phishing email.
Text version:
Date: Fri, Mar 10, 2023 at 1:22 PM From: Cg Vh <cgvh622@gmail.com> To: Clueless Phish Attachment: Subject: Renew your membership now for big savings ( DEWUIY-23797 ) Thanks [Malicious Attachment "Renewal details # 3729792.jpg"]
At first glance it has enough clues for us to know what they are up to
- The email address is a dead giveaway, specially if you glance but do not download the attached “invoice” showing the GeekSquad logo. GeekSquad has its own domain and would never use a gmail address, specially one with what seems to be someone’s name.
- The
Subject:of the email is classic for this kind of email.
The clever touch is that they made the invoice a jpg file instead of the usual pdf or word doc. Don’t get me wrong: there are ways to hide malware in that (I have not sat down to inspect the file yet, so I am going from the standpoint these phishers are clever until proven wrong), but the malware detection products out there (should) know how to find them in the pdfs and Microsoft Office docs, not in an image. Case in point, you can see that gmail claims it is ok:
Attachment scanning in Gmail
To help protect your inbox, Gmail blocks attachments when malware
is detected. You should still only download attachments from
people you trust. Learn more [Link]
As a result, someone may think “hmmm, gmail said is ok, and I can barely see what this is all about. Let me download it and open it. What could possibly go wrong?”
Not only your virus scanner will not flag it as suspicious or dangerous either, but also (depending on which program you use to open it) the malware hidden in the image file will be unleashed.
Clever girl. This is an example why I asked for your phish, or potential phishes: if it looks suspicious, let someone like me who enjoys tearing them apart investigate. Fun fact: I downloaded it, and it is 1.6 MB. That is a bit much for an invoice. But, so far I have not setup an environment where I feel comfortable enough to examine it.