• Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
MUST READ

Chrome sandbox escape nets security researcher $250,000 reward

 | 

Smart Buses flaws expose vehicles to tracking, control, and spying

 | 

MedusaLocker ransomware group is looking for pentesters

 | 

Google confirms Salesforce CRM breach, faces extortion threat

 | 

SECURITY AFFAIRS MALWARE NEWSLETTER ROUND 57

 | 

Security Affairs newsletter Round 536 by Pierluigi Paganini – INTERNATIONAL EDITION

 | 

Embargo Ransomware nets $34.2M in crypto since April 2024

 | 

Germany limits police spyware use to serious crimes

 | 

Phishing attacks exploit WinRAR flaw CVE-2025-8088 to install RomCom

 | 

French firm Bouygues Telecom suffered a data breach impacting 6.4M customers

 | 

Columbia University data breach impacted 868,969 people

 | 

SonicWall dismisses zero-day fears after Ransomware probe

 | 

Air France and KLM disclosed data breaches following the hack of a third-party platform

 | 

CISA, Microsoft warn of critical Exchange hybrid flaw CVE-2025-53786

 | 

Microsoft unveils Project Ire: AI that autonomously detects malware

 | 

CERT-UA warns of UAC-0099 phishing attacks targeting Ukraine’s defense sector

 | 

Over 100 Dell models exposed to critical ControlVault3 firmware bugs

 | 

How CTEM Boosts Visibility and Shrinks Attack Surfaces in Hybrid and Cloud Environments

 | 

WhatsApp cracks down on 6.8M scam accounts in global takedown

 | 

Trend Micro fixes two actively exploited Apex One RCE flaws

 | 
  • Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
  • Home
  • Breaking News
  • Cyber Crime
  • Hacking
  • Malware
  • Lampion malware origin servers geolocated in Turkey

Lampion malware origin servers geolocated in Turkey

Pierluigi Paganini February 27, 2020

After three months from the first detection, the Lampion origin was identified. A webserver named “portaldasfinancas” is available in Turkey and has been used to spread the threat in Portugal.

Lampion malware is the most critical malware affecting Portuguese users’ last three months. From December 2019 it had spread, impersonating and using template emails from the Portuguese Government Finance & Tax (Portal das Finanças – ATA), Energias de Portugal (EDP), and most recently DPD firm – an international parcel delivery service.

As Segurança-Informática (SI) Labs has reported over the months, hundreds of users have been infected by this threat, which exfiltrates bank credentials from victims’ devices to remote servers controlled by crooks.

This malware appears to be on the rise at the end of February 2020, after a fresh update where its operators introduced a new obfuscation layer on the first stage of the threat.

On February 27th, 2020, another template email was spread impersonating the Portuguese Government Finance & Tax (Portal das Finanças – ATA).

Figure 1: Lampion email template – February 27th – 2020.

In detail, the email was sent from a server geolocated on Turkey, a host named as “portaldasfinancas”, with a specially crafted unauthenticated service running to simply execute a massive Lampion campaign in a few clicks.

As observed below (Figure 2), the webservers used to perform the Lampion malscam campaigns are geolocated in Turkey and are used to:

  • Host the bulk service to execute Lampion malscam campaigns;
  • Host the .zip file downloaded from the malscam email by victims (the 1st stage); and
  • Sent specially crafted Lampion messages to targets.

Figure 2: Details on Lampion origin web-servers (source – Shodan).

As confirmed in Figure 3 , the server was created and is maintained to target specificly Portuguese users in-the-wild; as suggested by its internal name:  “portaldasfinancas “.

  1. Nome do Servidor: Linux portaldasfinancas 4.4.0-116-generic #140-Ubuntu SMP Mon Feb 12 21:23:04 UTC 2018 x86_64
  2. Sistema Operacional: Linux
  3. Endereço IP: 185.219.133.128
  4. Software usado: Apache/2.4.18 (Ubuntu)
  5. Email admin: webmaster@localhost
  6. Safe Mode:

Figure 3: Lampion web-server banner and tool to execute malscam campaigns – the origin of the Lampion’s emails sent to the Portuguese users from the last few months.

Although it cannot be fully confirmed, according to the IOCs already mentioned in previous articles, we reinforce through these indicators, that the authors of the malware are potential from Brazil (see some details from the source-code below).

  1. — snippet 1 —
  2. <form action=”” method=”post” enctype=”multipart/form-data” name=”form1″>
  3. <input name=”veio” value=”sim”>
  4. — snippet 2 —
  5. <span class=”alerta”>*Lembrete: texto em HTML</span></td>

In detail, using the service available to execute Lampion malscam campaigns, we can confirm that the email is reaching trusted services without fall into spam folders and systems.

For this Proof-of-Concept (PoC) scenario, the same email template of Lampion was used and sent to a legitimate account (owned by us).

Figure 4: Lampion origin server – the unauthenticated tool to launch malscam campaigns.

As observed, the email is sent with success (response  – HTTP 200).

Figure 5: HTTP request details and response.

In addition, an interesting string is presented when the campaign ends  “-Foi Tudo sapohha! – By “. This can be a useful indicator to track Lampion’s origin servers.

Figure 6: Response when the malicious campaign terminates with a particular string about Lampion owners.

Figure 7: Lampion’s email received on the target account.

Lampion feed available on: https://seguranca-informatica.pt/targeting-portugal-a-new-trojan-lampion-has-spread-using-template-emails-from-the-portuguese-government-finance-tax

Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) are reported in the original analysis published by Pedro Tavares on his blog:

https://seguranca-informatica.pt/lampion-malware-origin-servers-geolocated-in-turkey/#.XlgNamhKg2x
[adrotate banner=”9″] [adrotate banner=”12″]

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, malware)

[adrotate banner=”5″]

[adrotate banner=”13″]


facebook linkedin twitter

information security news it security it security news lampion malware malware Pierluigi Paganini Security Affairs Security News

you might also like

Pierluigi Paganini August 12, 2025
Researchers cracked the encryption used by DarkBit ransomware
Read more
Pierluigi Paganini August 11, 2025
Chrome sandbox escape nets security researcher $250,000 reward
Read more

leave a comment

newsletter

Subscribe to my email list and stay
up-to-date!

    recent articles

    Researchers cracked the encryption used by DarkBit ransomware

    Malware / August 12, 2025

    Chrome sandbox escape nets security researcher $250,000 reward

    Hacking / August 11, 2025

    Smart Buses flaws expose vehicles to tracking, control, and spying

    Hacking / August 11, 2025

    MedusaLocker ransomware group is looking for pentesters

    Hacking / August 11, 2025

    Google confirms Salesforce CRM breach, faces extortion threat

    Data Breach / August 10, 2025

    To contact me write an email to:

    Pierluigi Paganini :
    pierluigi.paganini@securityaffairs.co

    LEARN MORE

    QUICK LINKS

    • Home
    • Cyber Crime
    • Cyber warfare
    • APT
    • Data Breach
    • Deep Web
    • Digital ID
    • Hacking
    • Hacktivism
    • Intelligence
    • Internet of Things
    • Laws and regulations
    • Malware
    • Mobile
    • Reports
    • Security
    • Social Networks
    • Terrorism
    • ICS-SCADA
    • POLICIES
    • Contact me

    Copyright@securityaffairs 2024

    We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept All”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent.
    Cookie SettingsAccept All
    Manage consent

    Privacy Overview

    This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities...
    Necessary
    Always Enabled
    Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
    Non-necessary
    Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
    SAVE & ACCEPT