Removal of HawkEye keylogger presented in OSM Maritime email

What is "Maritime Email Virus"?

"Maritime Email Virus" is a spam campaign that cyber criminals use to trick people into installing the HawkEye keystroke logger. They send emails that are disguised as messages from OSM Maritime Group and hope that recipients open the attached file. If opened, this file infects computers with the aforementioned malicious program.

Do not trust this email or open the contents. Note, however, that OSM Maritime is a legitimate company and has nothing to do with malware distribution. Cyber criminals often hide behind names of legitimate companies (especially banks and governmental institutions) in attempts to give the impression of legitimacy and gain recipients' trust.

This email encourages recipients to open the attached file, which is supposedly confirmation of a payment. The attached ZIP archive file is called "Swift copy.zip" and contains another file that, if extracted and opened/executed, downloads and installs HawkEye.

Cyber criminals use this program to record keystrokes (keys pressed on the victim's keyboard) and steal information from various messaging apps, email clients, browsers, and so on. Therefore, it could be used to steal personal information such as passwords and logins of various personal accounts to hack them.

Hacked accounts might be used to make online purchases, money transfers, etc. People who have their accounts stolen might experience privacy and browsing safety issues, financial loss, and so on.

To avoid damage that might be caused with this keystroke logger and similar malicious programs, we advise you to leave files attached to emails such as "Maritime Email Virus" unopened.

Threat Summary:

Name	Maritime spam
Threat Type	Trojan, Password-stealing virus, Banking malware, Spyware
Hoax	This email is presented as a request to confirm a payment
Attachment(s)	Swift copy.zip
Detection Names	Arcabit (Trojan.Zmutzy.51), BitDefender (Trojan.Zmutzy.51), Fortinet (W32/Injector.DYNQ!tr), McAfee (Fareit-FLN!29242816BD40), Full List Of Detections (VirusTotal)
Symptoms	Trojans are designed to stealthily infiltrate the victim's computer and remain silent, and thus no particular symptoms are clearly visible on an infected machine.
Payload	HawkEye keystroke logger
Malicious Process Name	Swift copy.exe
Distribution methods	Infected email attachments, malicious online advertisements, social engineering, software cracks.
Damage	Stolen banking information, passwords, identity theft, victim's computer added to a botnet.
Malware Removal (Windows)	To eliminate possible malware infections, scan your computer with legitimate antivirus software. Our security researchers recommend using Combo Cleaner. ▼ Download Combo Cleaner To use full-featured product, you have to purchase a license for Combo Cleaner. 7 days free trial available. Combo Cleaner is owned and operated by Rcs Lt, the parent company of PCRisk.com read more.

There are many other spam campaigns online. Some examples are "Managing Director Email Virus", "Xerox Color Workstation Email Virus", and "Confirm Bank Account Email Virus". Typically, cyber criminals send these emails to trick people into installing malicious programs. For example, Adwind, Pony, FormBook, AZORult, and many others.

How did "Maritime Email Virus" infect my computer?

Typically, these emails are harmless as long as attached files remain unopened. In this particular case, computers become infected when people execute the file within the attached ZIP file ("Swift copy.zip").

In other cases, cyber criminals send emails that contain Microsoft Office or PDF documents, JavaScript files, executables (.exe), and other files. In all cases, files cannot cause installation of malicious software without first being opened.

How to avoid installation of malware?

Study each email received, especially if it contains an attachment or web link and is received from an unknown, suspicious address. If an email seems irrelevant, ignore it. Download software from official pages only. Do not use third party downloaders and tools such as Peer-to-Peer networks or unofficial, dubious websites.

Update installed software with implemented functions or tools provided by the official software developers. Do not use third party updaters. Activate licensed software properly, and do not try to bypass activation with various 'cracking' tools. This is illegal and often leads to computer infection with viruses, malware, and other rogue software.

Finally, have a reputable anti-spyware or anti-virus program installed and keep it enabled at all times. If you have already opened the "Maritime Email Virus" attachment, we recommend running a scan with Combo Cleaner Antivirus for Windows to automatically eliminate infiltrated malware.

Text presented in the "Maritime Email Virus" email message:

Dear OSM Maritime Group & CoÑ MBH sent you this email message with the following file attachments: - Swift copy2ip (715.8 KB) Comment Hello,
Please see the attached wire confirmation of payment made to your account today. Please inform as soon as payment is received then send us the full documents. We greatly appreciate your business!

Regards, Joern Krey OSM Maritime Group Co, MBH Germany Caffamacherreihe 7 20355 Hamburg 49(0)4038676850

File within a malicious attachment distributed via "Maritime Email Virus" running a process in Task Manager called "Swift copy.exe"

Swift copy.zip file detection names in VirusTotal:

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▼ DOWNLOAD Combo Cleaner By downloading any software listed on this website you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. To use full-featured product, you have to purchase a license for Combo Cleaner. 7 days free trial available. Combo Cleaner is owned and operated by Rcs Lt, the parent company of PCRisk.com read more.

Quick menu:

• What is Maritime spam?
• Types of malicious emails.
• How to spot a malicious email?
• What to do if you fell for an email scam?

Types of malicious emails:

Phishing Emails

Most commonly, cybercriminals use deceptive emails to trick Internet users into giving away their sensitive private information, for example, login information for various online services, email accounts, or online banking information.

Such attacks are called phishing. In a phishing attack, cybercriminals usually send an email message with some popular service logo (for example, Microsoft, DHL, Amazon, Netflix), create urgency (wrong shipping address, expired password, etc.), and place a link which they hope their potential victims will click on.

After clicking the link presented in such email message, victims are redirected to a fake website that looks identical or extremely similar to the original one. Victims are then asked to enter their password, credit card details, or some other information that gets stolen by cybercriminals.

Emails with Malicious Attachments

Another popular attack vector is email spam with malicious attachments that infect users' computers with malware. Malicious attachments usually carry trojans that are capable of stealing passwords, banking information, and other sensitive information.

In such attacks, cybercriminals' main goal is to trick their potential victims into opening an infected email attachment. To achieve this goal, email messages usually talk about recently received invoices, faxes, or voice messages.

If a potential victim falls for the lure and opens the attachment, their computers get infected, and cybercriminals can collect a lot of sensitive information.

While it's a more complicated method to steal personal information (spam filters and antivirus programs usually detect such attempts), if successful, cybercriminals can get a much wider array of data and can collect information for a long period of time.

Sextortion Emails

This is a type of phishing. In this case, users receive an email claiming that a cybercriminal could access the webcam of the potential victim and has a video recording of one's masturbation.

To get rid of the video, victims are asked to pay a ransom (usually using Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency). Nevertheless, all of these claims are false - users who receive such emails should ignore and delete them.

How to spot a malicious email?

While cyber criminals try to make their lure emails look trustworthy, here are some things that you should look for when trying to spot a phishing email:

• Check the sender's ("from") email address: Hover your mouse over the "from" address and check if it's legitimate. For example, if you received an email from Microsoft, be sure to check if the email address is @microsoft.com and not something suspicious like @m1crosoft.com, @microsfot.com, @account-security-noreply.com, etc.
• Check for generic greetings: If the greeting in the email is "Dear user", "Dear @youremail.com", "Dear valued customer", this should raise suspiciousness. Most commonly, companies call you by your name. Lack of this information could signal a phishing attempt.
• Check the links in the email: Hover your mouse over the link presented in the email, if the link that appears seems suspicious, don't click it. For example, if you received an email from Microsoft and the link in the email shows that it will go to firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0... you shouldn't trust it. It's best not to click any links in the emails but to visit the company website that sent you the email in the first place.
• Don't blindly trust email attachments: Most commonly, legitimate companies will ask you to log in to their website and to view any documents there; if you received an email with an attachment, it's a good idea to scan it with an antivirus application. Infected email attachments are a common attack vector used by cybercriminals.

To minimise the risk of opening phishing and malicious emails we recommend using Combo Cleaner Antivirus for Windows. 

Example of a spam email:

What to do if you fell for an email scam?

• If you clicked on a link in a phishing email and entered your password - be sure to change your password as soon as possible. Usually, cybercriminals collect stolen credentials and then sell them to other groups that use them for malicious purposes. If you change your password in a timely manner, there's a chance that criminals won't have enough time to do any damage.
• If you entered your credit card information - contact your bank as soon as possible and explain the situation. There's a good chance that you will need to cancel your compromised credit card and get a new one.
• If you see any signs of identity theft - you should immediately contact the Federal Trade Commission. This institution will collect information about your situation and create a personal recovery plan.
• If you opened a malicious attachment - your computer is probably infected, you should scan it with a reputable antivirus application. For this purpose, we recommend using Combo Cleaner Antivirus for Windows.
• Help other Internet users - report phishing emails to Anti-Phishing Working Group, FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, National Fraud Information Center and U.S. Department of Justice.

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