I mentioned this in a previous post but we are seeing a large increase in phishing attacks from known sources.  In other words, phishing attacks are coming from your friends, colleagues, and vendors.  You trust these sources and you are likely to drop your guard more so than when say the Nigerian Prince email makes its way into your inbox.  Obviously, if someone falls for the phish, this campaign lives on and that's how future attacks occur.  But how does the original attack get legs underneath it?  First, let's start with the phish and work our way backwards.

This is from the latest releases on Vulnhub but it does not have a description.  I think this box was either on the TryHackMe platform or maybe it was accepted to that platform.  The flags are the giveaway and due to their specific look, I don't think it's a coincidence.  Anyway, moving on...

We kick off with Nmap:

We are seeing a ton of email account compromises that are from known sources.  In other words, a vendor, a customer, or an acquaintance, gets compromised.  Frequently, the attacker will reply to an existing email thread from the known source  to you and they will add an attachment or a link.  In that latter scenario, the link is typically leading to a fake credentials page.  This type of attack is so common that we're seeing it several times per week.  It will only get worse. 

With the credentials attack, two-factor authentication (2fa) will typically stop this in its tracks.  You can steal credentials all day long but bypassing 2fa is a much bigger challenge.  And honestly, it's not worth it to the attacker unless the victim has been specifically targeted -- typically not the case.