Usage of .ch domain names for spamming malware Tofsee stopped

It is rare that a malware family uses .ch or .li domain names in their domain name generation algorithm (DGA). The last time I remember, that we had to take action against a malware using .ch or .li domain names was about 8 years ago. It was Conficker that infected millions of computers worldwide. The malware was generating about 500 .ch and .li domains a day to be potentially used as a command and control server. By then SWITCH joined the conficker working group to prevent the use of domain names by this malware.

Since then we have been watching the use of .ch and .li domain names in malware DGAs and prepared for this by making an agreement with the Registrar of Last Resort (RoLR) to prevent the registration of domain names used in DGA algorithms of malware.

This week the Swiss Govermental Computer Emergency Response Team (GovCERT) informed us about the malware Tofsee using .ch as one of the TLDs in its DGA. Continue reading “Usage of .ch domain names for spamming malware Tofsee stopped”

An attachment that wasn’t there

By Slavo Greminger and Oli Schacher

On a daily basis we collect tons of Spam emails, which we analyze for malicious content. Of course, this is not done manually by our thousands of minions, but automated using some Python-fu. Python is a programming language that comes with many libraries, making it easy for us to quickly perform such tasks.

Python’s email library deals with, well, emails. And it does it well. But on October 3rd, we encountered an attachment that wasn’t there – at least according to Python’s email library.

Mal-formatted email
Left: Outlook Web does not show the attachment          Right: Thunderbird does show the attachment

Now how could that happen?

Emails do have a certain structure, which is described nicely in RFC #822, RFC #2822, RFC #5322, RFC #2045, RFC #2046, RFC #2047, RFC #2049, RFC #2231, RFC #4288 and RFC #4289. Even though these RFC’s are clear in their own way, an illustration might help (we focus on multipart emails only) to understand why Python’s email library got fooled.

Continue reading “An attachment that wasn’t there”