Fraudsters Using Telegram API to Harvest Credentials

A recently discovered phishing campaign attempted to steal victims’ credentials by abusing the Telegram messaging app’s API to create malicious domains that help bypass security tools such as secure email gateways, according to researchers at security firm Cofense.

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This specific phishing assault appeared energetic in mid-December 2020 and has since stopped. The targets of those malicious emails primarily labored within the U.Okay. monetary providers sector, Cofense notes.

Whereas the Telegram software presents safe, encrypted communication channels for its customers, the Cofense report notes that the service additionally presents API choices that may permit customers to create packages that use the app’s messages for an interface. On this case, the fraudsters used the APIs to create realistic-looking phishing domains that bypassed safety instruments.

“For this specific marketing campaign, they spoofed an electronic mail account that appeared to an inner person as authentic,” says Jake Longden, a menace analyst at Cofense. “Then they used a site as the positioning for the URL redirection that probably on the time wasn’t a identified dangerous web site, however which is now labeled as malicious.”

Telegram is an encrypted messaging app that has greater than 500 million month-to-month energetic shopper and enterprise customers. Regular messages aren’t totally encrypted, however Telegram has a sophisticated service with end-to-end encryption.

How Phishing Assaults Labored

The targets of this specific marketing campaign had been despatched phishing emails that appeared to come back from an inner supply, with addresses equivalent to “assist@inner.com,” however which really originated with a supply exterior the group, in accordance with the report.

The phishing emails usually include an pressing message alert within the topic line, equivalent to “Overview All Pending Messages,” which is designed to get the potential sufferer to open the message, Cofense notes.

“The person is introduced with a discover advising that they’ve messages to evaluate. The daring and huge title attracts consideration, and is adopted by additional info to make clear the aim of the e-mail, in accordance with the report. “Then there’s a button for the person to click on to ‘Launch All’ the blocked emails to their inbox.”

If the focused sufferer clicks the hyperlink to examine the messages, they’re led to a malicious area that’s created from the Telegram API and designed to appear like a webmail login web page that asks for credentials, in accordance with the report. The webpage additionally pulls within the person’s electronic mail deal with from the URL to present it one other layer of legitimacy.

After the person’s password and different credentials are harvested, the data is then despatched to the Telegram API created by the fraudsters, whereas the sufferer receives a message that the account has been up to date, Cofense notes.

“As soon as the malicious area has been recognized, it may be blocked. Nevertheless, by using the Telegram API, the menace actor is working to avoid interference,” in accordance with the report. “They’re complicating strategies for eradicating saved credentials which have been harvested, and might view and entry these credentials at their comfort on a web page they management.”

Telegram Abuse

Different safety researchers have discovered instances by which fraudsters and cybercriminals are abusing different options present in Telegram for their very own functions.

In September 2020, safety agency Malwarebytes discovered that some fraudsters had began utilizing Telegram as a option to sweep up fee card knowledge from victims utilizing Base64 encoding strings along with a bot (see: Fraudsters Use Telegram App to Steal Payment Card Data).

Researchers with Juniper Threat Labs discovered hackers concentrating on victims through the use of a Trojan, which then created a safe Telegram channel to ship knowledge again to the attackers’ command-and-control server, in accordance with a September 2019 report.