Fake Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 video hides a backdoor

As the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 nears the end of the second week, cyber crooks are diversifying the attacks against users curious to know what really happened.

Last week survey scammers used a fake video and news of the finding of the missing plane and its passengers to lure Facebook users into completing online surveys and downloading potentially malicious files.

This week Trend Micro researchers have spotted a malware delivery campaign that targets users via email.

The email purportedly contains a 5-minute video about the flight (Malaysian Airlines MH370 5m Video.exe), but is actually a backdoor that gets installed and allows attackers to access the infected computer at a later date and install additional malware on it, collect information, and so on.

“There is one unusual aspect to this backdoor,” noted threat response engineer Rika Joi Gregorio. “Its command-and-control (C&C) server at www-dpmc-dynssl-com (replace dashes with dots) was noted by other security researchers in October of last year as being related to a targeted attack.”

“It is unusual for a targeted attack to share the same infrastructure as a more ‘conventional’ cybercrime campaign, yet that appears to be the case here,” he noted, but added that they currently have no information that this particular backdoor is being used in targeted attacks.