{"id":227,"date":"2025-03-10T16:46:54","date_gmt":"2025-03-10T21:46:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freshphish.info\/?p=227"},"modified":"2025-07-29T09:29:46","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T14:29:46","slug":"hack-utilizes-organic-component","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freshphish.info\/?p=227","title":{"rendered":"Hack Utilizes Organic Component"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>If a hacker can&#8217;t hack the system, he&#8217;ll hack the organic component, otherwise known as the user. In this case, the email the link was found in wasn&#8217;t actually malicious, so I won&#8217;t post it here. It was a legitimate email linking to a site that happened to have been compromised and used to spread malware. It&#8217;s the way it tried to spread malware that I find interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m not going to try to hide the URL in question but later attempts to examine the malicious site failed, which tells me it was likely fixed relatively quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Upon visiting the site, I was shown a captcha page that looked different than any other captcha I&#8217;ve seen:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"534\" src=\"https:\/\/freshphish.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/01-1024x534.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-228\" srcset=\"https:\/\/freshphish.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/01-1024x534.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/freshphish.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/01-300x156.jpg 300w, https:\/\/freshphish.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/01-768x400.jpg 768w, https:\/\/freshphish.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/01.jpg 1051w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Note the steps it provides, instructing the user on how to pass the verification. The first step is to hold the Windows key and press the letter &#8216;R&#8217;. This brings up the Windows &#8220;Run&#8221; box. The next step is to press Ctrl-V, which is the keyboard shortcut to paste. Doing so pastes a command into the Run box to pull down code from website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"619\" height=\"494\" src=\"https:\/\/freshphish.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/02.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-229\" srcset=\"https:\/\/freshphish.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/02.jpg 619w, https:\/\/freshphish.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/02-300x239.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 619px) 100vw, 619px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>When I tried this, nothing displayed on the screen and Any.Run only detected the test as &#8220;Suspicious&#8221;. This tells me nothing likely was actually pulled down from the site. Further testing after this provided no additional information as it appears the compromised site was fixed. Still I find the way the site attempted the hack to be very interesting, in addition to how the site automatically placed the script into the workstation&#8217;s clipboard. I wonder if anyone fell for it before it was taken down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8211;Matt<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If a hacker can&#8217;t hack the system, he&#8217;ll hack the organic component, otherwise known as the user. In this case,<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/freshphish.info\/?p=227\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Hack Utilizes Organic Component<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[62,65,46,64,63],"class_list":["post-227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-phish","tag-compromised-site","tag-copy-paste","tag-malware-delivery","tag-organic-component","tag-pebkac"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freshphish.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freshphish.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freshphish.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freshphish.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freshphish.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=227"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/freshphish.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":253,"href":"https:\/\/freshphish.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions\/253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freshphish.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freshphish.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freshphish.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}