We have been made aware of "scary" emails sent in the last few hours that purport to come from the FBI/DHS. While the emails are indeed being sent from infrastructure that is owned by the FBI/DHS (the LEEP portal), our research shows that these emails *are* fake.
Spamhaus
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Strengthening trust and safety across the Internet, by being the authority on IP and domain reputation.
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- Replying to @spamhausThese emails look like this: Sending IP: 153.31.119.142 (mx-east-ic.fbi.gov) From: [email protected] Subject: Urgent: Threat actor in systems
- Replying to @spamhausThese fake warning emails are apparently being sent to addresses scraped from ARIN database. They are causing a lot of disruption because the headers are real, they really are coming from FBI infrastructure. They have no name or contact information in the .sig. Please beware!
- EMOTET UPDATE | We are observing more activity coming from the #Emotet #Botnet today. We are seeing email traffic from this botnet again. Both URLs and Attachments are being utilized for distribution. #malspam #threatintel
- Our telemetry indicates that there were two "spam" waves, one shortly before 5 AM (UTC) and another one shortly after 7 AM (UTC). The FBI has been getting many calls about it. We are therefore refraining from further actions against the sending IP addresses.
- The following chart shows email traffic originating from the FBI mailserver (mx-east-ic.fbi.gov | 153.31.119.142) involved. You can clearly see the two spikes caused by the fake warning last night. Timestamps are in UTC.
- Replying to @MalwareTechBlog and @RichHicksonHuman error. Faulty human has been replaced by a small shell script.
- 🚨#IcedID, #Smokeloader, #SystemBC, #Pikabot and #Bumblebee botnets have been disrupted by Operation Endgame!! This is the largest operation EVER against botnets involved with ransomware, with gargantuan thanks to a coordinated effort led by international agencies👏👏 As with🚨Largest ever operation against botnets hits dropper malware ecosystem. Operation Endgame, coordinated from Europol headquarters, has led to four arrests and the takedown of over 100 servers worldwide. More information in our press release⤵️ europol.europa.eu/media-press/ne…
- Some cybercriminal hosters go to great lengths to maintain a legitimate facade. Others, not so much. An example of the latter is 49.3 Networking LLC (AS399979), a Delaware-based 🇺🇲 shell corporation. When asked via Telegram for a service offering for malware distribution, theIt is just laughable how comfortable these bulletproof hosters are... Below AS 399979 that is provided upstream by @aurologiccom cc: @spamhaus @abuse_ch 'hot swapping ip's when listed allowed 🤡'
- Whilst Google Registry adding .zip is INSANE 🤯, it highlights a much BIGGER problem….the ability to craft internationalized domain names (IDNs) to deliberately trick users. Check out this example we created: irs.gov⧸tax.form1[.]zip - notice the weird slash? ⏬
- Replying to @WaldoTJTriple action: Convince people to shut things down just in case, while veracity is determined, character assassination of Vinny Troia who was mentioned in it, and flooding the FBI with calls. Or, as someone else said, "for the lulz". Maybe all of the above. Maybe something else!










