A sophisticated cyber campaign leveraging legitimate Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tools has emerged as a significant threat to European organizations, particularly those in France and Luxembourg.
Since November 2024, threat actors have been deploying carefully crafted PDF documents containing embedded links to RMM installers, effectively bypassing traditional email security measures and malware detection systems.
This attack vector represents an evolution in social engineering tactics, exploiting the inherent trust placed in legitimate administrative tools.
The campaign primarily targets high-value sectors including energy, government, banking, and construction industries across Europe.
The geographic focus on Luxembourg is particularly noteworthy, as the country’s high GDP per capita makes it an attractive target for financially motivated cybercriminals.
PDF used for targeting a real estate organization in Netherlands (Source – Withsecure)
Rather than employing broad-scale distribution methods, these threat actors demonstrate precision targeting through industry-specific PDF content and localized language use, suggesting intimate knowledge of regional business practices.
The attack methodology centers on meticulously crafted social engineering emails that either spoof legitimate business addresses or utilize lookalike domains.
Social engineering email used to distribute malicious PDF (Source – Withsecure)
These emails often impersonate senior employees within target organizations, dramatically increasing their credibility and success rates.
WithSecure analysts identified this campaign through pattern analysis of PDF metadata and delivery mechanisms, noting the consistent use of embedded direct download links pointing to legitimate RMM vendor platforms.
WithSecure researchers noted a significant tactical evolution in the delivery mechanism, observing the abuse of trusted platforms like Zendesk to distribute malicious PDFs.
This shift represents a calculated effort to evade email security controls by leveraging platforms not typically associated with phishing campaigns.
PDF Delivery Mechanism
The technical sophistication of this campaign lies in its simplicity and abuse of legitimate infrastructure.
Each PDF contains a single embedded direct download link that connects to authentic RMM vendor URLs generated when attackers register accounts on platforms including FleetDeck, Atera, Bluetrait, and ScreenConnect.
These URLs contain unique access keys linking installers directly to attacker-controlled accounts.
Example FleetDeck URL structure:
hxxps://agent[.]fleetdeck[.]io/[UNIQUE_IDENTIFIER]?win
Metadata analysis reveals seven distinct author names including “Dennis Block” and “Guillaume Vaugeois,” created using common tools like Microsoft Word, Canva, and ILovePDF.
This diversity likely represents an intentional obfuscation strategy to evade detection systems that rely on consistent metadata patterns for threat attribution.
The campaign’s success stems from exploiting the legitimate nature of RMM tools, which require no additional configuration post-installation and immediately grant remote access without user authentication steps.
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