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Arctic Wolf says Teams IT-support chats used to drop malware
The Hacker News, citing Arctic Wolf Labs, reported a recurring pattern in which attackers use Microsoft Teams external chat as fake IT support to gain remote access and, in some cases, ransomware.
Arctic Wolf Labs described a recurring social-engineering pattern in which attackers use Microsoft Teams' external chat feature to impersonate IT support, obtain remote access, and in some cases deliver malware or ransomware, The Hacker News reported Monday1.
The company said the same throwaway tenants, IT Support display names, remote-access tools, and payload domains appeared across hundreds of incidents1. Messages came from Teams identities on newly created or acquired Microsoft 365 tenants, using IT-themed display names or first names to weaken external-user warnings1.
Nearly 30 to 40 percent of cases Arctic Wolf investigated used onmicrosoft.com fallback domains generated when a tenant is created, The Hacker News said, with tenant names such as helpdeskteam365 and itendpoint3651. Of paid domains seen in recent months, about half used the.top TLD, about 40 percent used.com, and a little more than 5 percent used multi-level domains such as.com.pl, The Hacker News reported1.
The Hacker News said the activity aligns with a cluster labeled STAC4749, previously described as creating IT-themed.top domains1. Sophos has separately tied related Teams vishing to Chaos ransomware, according to The Hacker News1.
Attacks often include voice calls that push victims to grant access through legitimate remote-management software, including Quick Assist, AnyDesk, ScreenConnect, TeamViewer, Atera, Zoho Assist, NetSupport, and LogMeIn1. That access was used for reconnaissance, a GoGRPC backdoor, movement toward domain controllers, extra RMM tools such as Level, data theft, and ransomware binaries, the report said1.
In a subset of cases, Arctic Wolf said attackers used Microsoft notes and generally avoided pasting URLs into Teams so Safe Links and ZAP would not scan them, instead retrieving payloads during the remote session1. In one case, a user was told to run PowerShell that downloaded an MSI from Azure Blob Storage, which then ran a Python implant and LDAP queries against Active Directory1.
Arctic Wolf said external Teams chat is effective because it exploits trust rather than a software flaw, combining email bombing, IT-support impersonation, new tenants, and fast social engineering1. Microsoft's response to the latest Arctic Wolf report was not included in The Hacker News article1.
