Note 0: This series of articles is a description (hopefully entertaining) of the case study (fictional, beware) that Maite Moreno and myself presented at the c1b3rwall digital security and cyber-intelligence conference, organized by the Spanish National Police. If you want more information on CEO scams you can check the (in Spanish) slides of our talk,full of data as well as a real case that we researched.

Note 1: We emphasize that this case is fictitious. However, the techniques and procedures used are identical to those used by the attackers, with the difference that we offer evidence to study them in detail. Note that he investigation could have been done more efficiently, but we wanted to show some interesting elements and techniques to deep into Exchange, hence the steps taken.

Note 2: Before starting the case study… you can play it! We have set up an open-access forensic CTF you can use to practice your technical skills. Try it before reading these articles (recommended), or later to reinforce concepts. If you only want the raw evidence, you can get them here. You can also download the step-by-step guide with all the tools and evidence needed for each step of the articles, perfecto to continue with the slides.

Those of us who work in incident response and forensics would love want attackers to warn us before doing their wrongdoing. We want it together with the Lamborghini, the yacht and the unicorn with a rainbow in the background, but we get the same response in almost all cases: no f****** way.

“What a pain in the ass it is to have an incident at 14:55 on a Friday,” you would think. There are worse things: a call from your boss at 15h on a Saturday while you are taking a nap: “Grab your incident suitcase, ‘we’re going to party’».

The party consists of about 4 hours of travel from Madrid to Ponferrada, where the headquarters of the MINAF (Minerías Alcázar y Ferrán) is located. MINAF is a mining company that will not ring a bell, but which has a turnover of more than 40 million euros and operates in 12 countries.