KrebsOnSecurity lately heard from a reader whose boss’s e mail account received phished and was used to trick one of many firm’s prospects into sending a big cost to scammers. An investigation into the attacker’s infrastructure factors to a long-running Nigerian cybercrime ring that’s actively focusing on established corporations within the transportation and aviation industries.
Picture: Shutterstock, Mr. Teerapon Tiuekhom.
A reader who works within the transportation trade despatched a tip a couple of latest profitable phishing marketing campaign that tricked an government on the firm into getting into their credentials at a faux Microsoft 365 login web page. From there, the attackers rapidly mined the chief’s inbox for previous communications about invoices, copying and modifying a few of these messages with new bill calls for that had been despatched to a few of the firm’s prospects and companions.
Talking on situation of anonymity, the reader mentioned the ensuing phishing emails to prospects got here from a newly registered area title that was remarkably just like their employer’s area, and that a minimum of one in every of their prospects fell for the ruse and paid a phony bill. They mentioned the attackers had spun up a look-alike area just some hours after the chief’s inbox credentials had been phished, and that the rip-off resulted in a buyer struggling a six-figure monetary loss.
The reader additionally shared that the e-mail addresses within the registration information for the imposter area — roomservice801@gmail.com — is tied to many such phishing domains. Certainly, a search on this e mail tackle at DomainTools.com finds it’s related to a minimum of 240 domains registered in 2024 or 2025. Nearly all of them mimic legit domains for corporations within the aerospace and transportation industries worldwide.
An Web seek for this e mail tackle reveals a humorous weblog put up from 2020 on the Russian discussion board hackware[.]ru, which discovered roomservice801@gmail.com was tied to a phishing assault that used the lure of phony invoices to trick the recipient into logging in at a faux Microsoft login web page. We’ll come again to this analysis in a second.
JUSTY JOHN
DomainTools reveals that a few of the early domains registered to roomservice801@gmail.com in 2016 embody different helpful data. For instance, the WHOIS information for alhhomaidhicentre[.]biz reference the technical contact of “Justy John” and the e-mail tackle justyjohn50@yahoo.com.
A search at DomainTools discovered justyjohn50@yahoo.com has been registering one-off phishing domains since a minimum of 2012. At this level, I used to be satisfied that some safety firm certainly had already printed an evaluation of this specific menace group, however I didn’t but have sufficient data to attract any strong conclusions.
DomainTools says the Justy John e mail tackle is tied to greater than two dozen domains registered since 2012, however we are able to discover tons of extra phishing domains and associated e mail addresses just by pivoting on particulars within the registration information for these Justy John domains. For instance, the road tackle utilized by the Justy John area axisupdate[.]web — 7902 Pelleaux Street in Knoxville, TN — additionally seems within the registration information for accountauthenticate[.]com, acctlogin[.]biz, and loginaccount[.]biz, all of which at one level included the e-mail tackle rsmith60646@gmail.com.
That Rsmith Gmail tackle is linked to the 2012 phishing area alibala[.]biz (one character off of the Chinese language e-commerce large alibaba.com, with a special top-level area of .biz). A search in DomainTools on the telephone quantity in these area information — 1.7736491613 — reveals much more phishing domains in addition to the Nigerian telephone quantity “2348062918302” and the e-mail tackle michsmith59@gmail.com.
DomainTools reveals michsmith59@gmail.com seems within the registration information for the area seltrock[.]com, which was used within the phishing assault documented in the 2020 Russian weblog put up talked about earlier. At this level, we’re simply two steps away from figuring out the menace actor group.
The identical Nigerian telephone quantity reveals up in dozens of area registrations that reference the e-mail tackle sebastinekelly69@gmail.com, together with 26i3[.]web, costamere[.]com, danagruop[.]us, and dividrilling[.]com. A Net search on any of these domains finds they had been listed in an “indicator of compromise” listing on GitHub maintained by Palo Alto Networks‘ Unit 42 analysis group.
SILVERTERRIER
Based on Unit 42, the domains are the handiwork of an enormous cybercrime group primarily based in Nigeria that it dubbed “SilverTerrier” again in 2014. In an October 2021 report, Palo Alto mentioned SilverTerrier excels at so-called “enterprise e-mail compromise” or BEC scams, which goal legit enterprise e mail accounts by social engineering or laptop intrusion actions. BEC criminals use that entry to provoke or redirect the switch of enterprise funds for private acquire.
Palo Alto says SilverTerrier encompasses tons of of BEC fraudsters, a few of whom have been arrested in numerous worldwide legislation enforcement operations by Interpol. In 2022, Interpol and the Nigeria Police Pressure arrested 11 alleged SilverTerrier members, together with a distinguished SilverTerrier chief who’d been flaunting his wealth on social media for years. Sadly, the lure of straightforward cash, endemic poverty and corruption, and low limitations to entry for cybercrime in Nigeria conspire to supply a continuing stream of latest recruits.
BEC scams had been the seventh most reported crime tracked by the FBI’s Web Crime Criticism Heart (IC3) in 2024, producing greater than 21,000 complaints. Nevertheless, BEC scams had been the second costliest type of cybercrime reported to the feds final 12 months, with almost $2.8 billion in claimed losses. In its 2025 Fraud and Management Survey Report, the Affiliation for Monetary Professionals discovered 63 % of organizations skilled a BEC final 12 months.
Poking at a few of the e mail addresses that spool out from this analysis reveals quite a lot of Fb accounts for folks residing in Nigeria or within the United Arab Emirates, a lot of whom don’t seem to have tried to masks their real-life identities. Palo Alto’s Unit 42 researchers reached an analogous conclusion, noting that though a small subset of those crooks went to nice lengths to hide their identities, it was normally easy to study their identities on social media accounts and the main messaging providers.
Palo Alto mentioned BEC actors have develop into way more organized over time, and that whereas it stays straightforward to search out actors working as a bunch, the apply of utilizing one telephone quantity, e mail tackle or alias to register malicious infrastructure in help of a number of actors has made it way more time consuming (however not unimaginable) for cybersecurity and legislation enforcement organizations to type out which actors dedicated particular crimes.
“We proceed to search out that SilverTerrier actors, no matter geographical location, are sometimes linked by just a few levels of separation on social media platforms,” the researchers wrote.
FINANCIAL FRAUD KILL CHAIN
Palo Alto has printed a helpful listing of suggestions that organizations can undertake to attenuate the incidence and influence of BEC assaults. Lots of these suggestions are prophylactic, comparable to conducting common worker safety coaching and reviewing community safety insurance policies.
However one advice — getting acquainted with a course of generally known as the “monetary fraud kill chain” or FFKC — bears particular point out as a result of it provides the only finest hope for BEC victims who’re in search of to claw again funds made to fraudsters, and but far too many victims don’t realize it exists till it’s too late.
Picture: ic3.gov.
As defined in this FBI primer, the Worldwide Monetary Fraud Kill Chain is a partnership between federal legislation enforcement and monetary entities whose objective is to freeze fraudulent funds wired by victims. Based on the FBI, viable sufferer complaints filed with ic3.gov promptly after a fraudulent switch (usually lower than 72 hours) will likely be routinely triaged by the Monetary Crimes Enforcement Community (FinCEN).
The FBI famous in its IC3 annual report (PDF) that the FFKC had a 66 % success price in 2024. Viable ic3.gov complaints contain losses of a minimum of $50,000, and embody all information from the sufferer or sufferer financial institution, in addition to a accomplished FFKC kind (offered by FinCEN) containing sufferer data, recipient data, financial institution names, account numbers, location, SWIFT, and any further data.
