Report from Irish solicitor - Munster
18/10/2017 16:10:00A Munster firm received an email containing malware that purported to be requesting a quote for the solicitor to act in a conveyancing matter in October 2017.
Date discovered: 18 October 2017
Type: Other – request for quote to act in conveyance/attempted phishing/malware attack
Region: Munster
Description: Received email from Excel Group excelgroup01@icloud.com. This email was oddly worded as follows:-
Good morning,
I have a house for sale and I got my loan approved so I am looking to purchase a new one too. I'll be glad if you can go through vendor's statement and COS attached and get back to me with your conveyancing quote and service procedures.
Warm Regards
Julie Evans
The email, on inspection, showed that the email had been sent to another practice.
The attachment consists of an Adobe Acrobat .pdf file, which contains the instructions:-
The Attached PDF is Acrobat protected . Please Click and Follow the Instruction to view it.
The link then provided is to a shorturl - this is a link to an executable php file located at another web address (kranes.info).
I have not accessed this link, for obvious reasons. I presume this is a malware attempt.
Client money stolen?: No
Able to quantify cost of attack to practice? N/A
Informed relevant authorities eg bank, police, insurers, Law Society? No