Cloud Customer Relationship Management (CRM) services are broadly used, house organization’s most critical customer data, and deliver those data to corporate users via the web. Netskope Threat Research Labs have identified malicious files related to credential stealers and backdoors residing in popular cloud CRM services. These files can be shared/collaborated on within an organization’s cloud CRM service thereby creating a new malware attack and propagation vector. The malicious files identified by the Netskope Threat Research Labs in cloud CRM services are detected by Netskope Threat Protection as Backdoor.Zbot.O, Backdoor.Generckd.3017777 and W97M.Downloader.UA.
Cloud CRM services as an attack vector in the cloud
The malicious files residing inside the cloud CRM services are typically viewed as internal files. Either the sales organization users or other users involved in the customer relationship process will open malicious files they believe to be associated with a sales engagement at a later date or as per the CRM workflow. This is a critical compromise, since some of the users may be operating on a device that they view as relatively hardened against malware. This makes them less likely to scrutinize the attachment. That said, other users involved in the customer relationship process may genuinely be on a vulnerable endpoint.
Attack delivery
The delivery of malware from cloud CRM services starts with the initial step of uploading malicious files into the enterprise service accounts. There are a number of ways in which malicious files make their way into these services. An enterprise user operating on an unmanaged and insecure device could upload files as attachments to objects in the service. A large number of enterprises provide their vendors and partners access to their CRM services for uploading documents such as invoices, purchase orders, etc. (and often these happen as automated workflows). The enterprise has no control over the vendor or partner device and, most importantly, over the files being uploaded from them. In many cases, vendor- or partner-uploaded files carry with them a high level of implicit trust. Along with these, the growth of interconnected cloud services provide new paths for malicious files to make their way into cloud CRM services. For example, a number of popular services integrate with cloud storage services such as Box, Dropbox, and Microsoft Office 365 OneDrive for Business, as well as collaboration services such as Slack. Once inside the cloud CRM service, malware get delivered to unsuspecting users via the implicit CRM workflows and collaboration features.
Attack depiction
The visual depiction of the cloud CRM service as an attack vector and Netskope Threat Protection are shown in Figure 1.
