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The abuse of Google Drive to deliver malicious content continues, and two recent examples remind us how the flexibility of this cloud storage tool can be easily weaponized by malicious actors. And the spectrum of content that can be distributed, and victims that can be targeted is surprising.
In the first example, attributed to a group of hackers recruited in a Russian-speaking forum, the Google Threat Analysis Group has dismantled a financially motivated phishing campaign targeting YouTubers with Cookie Theft malware, a session hijacking technique that enables access to user accounts with session cookies stored in the browser. The purpose of this campaign, luring the victims with fake collaboration opportunities, was to hijack their YouTube channel and then either sell it or use it for cryptocurrency scams.
The phishing typically started with a customized email introducing a company and its products (1,011 domains, some of them impersonating legitimate companies), and once the target agreed to the deal, a malware landing page disguised as a software download URL was sent via email or a PDF on Google Drive, and in a few cases, Google Documents containing the phishing links. To give you an idea of how easily these services can be exploited for large-scale campaigns, Google identified around 15,000 accounts, some of which were explicitly created for this campaign.
An additional (literally) scary campaign spotted by Cofense has delivered the MirCop ransomware via an articulated multi-stage kill chain where once again Google Drive plays an important (initial) role. This specific attack started via a business-related email, suggesting a previous agreement between the sender and the victim, and containing the link to a supposed “DWG following Supplies List” hosted on a Google Drive URL. Besides evading Secure Email Gateways, Google Drive provides legitimacy to the email and in the user’s mind is also associated with a service used to exchange business communications. The linked document is an