Dodge Emails carrying Malware Masquerading as Legitimate File

A newly discovered malware is masquerading in the form of a Microsoft PowerPoint file which downloads the infection as soon as users hover over a link. The file is named as order & prsn.ppsx' or 'order.ppsx' or 'invoice.ppsx' and is sent as an attachment through email to victims with the subject line 'RE:Purchase orders #6933' or 'Fwd:Confirmation'.

What happens?

While PowerPoint files are written as PPTX, this file that comes attached in the email reads as PPSX. The file format is identical to PowerPoint files but they enter the PowerPoint presentation view directly when opened. On opening, there is a message written in bright blue font saying, 'Loading Please Wait' which is the malicious link. What makes the malware extremely dangerous is that users do not even have to click on this malicious link. The victims only need to hover over the link and the malicious code will be executed.

How to secure your system?

As these emails use attractive subjects to lure the users to open emails, we must filter these emails based on the subjects. O365 Manager Plus provides exhaustive reports on Office 365 services to gain insights on the happenings inside your organization. With Messages by Subject Report, you can identify the emails with subjects that are suspicious to you.

Once you identify such emails, find the senders and update your malware and spam filter policies to filter emails from them. After updating malware/spam filter policies, you can use O365 Manager Plus' Mail Trace auditing to view the messages filtered by them.

To know more about the reports provided by O365 Manager Plus, click here.