“You’re invited!” 

It sounds friendly, familiar and quite harmless. But in a scam we recently spotted, that simple phrase is being used to trick victims into installing a full remote access tool on their Windows computers—giving attackers complete control of the system. 

What appears to be a casual party or event invitation leads to the silent installation of ScreenConnect, a legitimate remote support tool quietly installed in the background and abused by attackers. 

Here’s how the scam works, why it’s effective, and how to protect yourself. 

The email: A party invitation 

Victims receive an email framed as a personal invitation—often written to look like it came from a friend or acquaintance. The message is deliberately informal and social, lowering suspicion and encouraging quick action. 

In the screenshot below, the email arrived from a friend whose email account had been hacked, but it could just as easily come from a sender you don’t know.

So far, we’ve only seen this campaign targeting people in the UK, but there’s nothing stopping it from expanding elsewhere. 

Clicking the link in the email leads to a polished invitation page hosted on an attacker-controlled domain. 

The invite: The landing page that leads to an installer 

The landing page leans heavily into the party theme, but instead of showing event details, the page nudges the user toward opening a file. None of them look dangerous on their own, but together they keep the user focused on the “invitation” file: 

• A bold “You’re Invited!” headline 
• The suggestion that a friend had sent the invitation 
• A message saying the invitation is best viewed on a Windows laptop or desktop
• A countdown suggesting your invitation is already “downloading” 
• A message implying urgency and social proof (“I opened mine and it was so easy!”) 

Within seconds, the browser is redirected to download RSVPPartyInvitationCard.msi 

The page even triggers the download automatically to keep the victim moving forward without stopping to think. 

This MSI file isn’t an invitation. It’s an installer. 

The guest: What the MSI actually does 

When the user opens the MSI file, it launches msiexec.exe and silently installs ScreenConnect Client, a legitimate remote access tool often used by IT support teams.  

There’s no invitation, RSVP form, or calendar entry. 

What happens instead: 

• ScreenConnect binaries are installed under C:\Program Files (x86)\ScreenConnect Client\ 
• A persistent Windows service is created (for example, ScreenConnect Client 18d1648b87bb3023) 
• ScreenConnect installs multiple .NET-based components 
• There is no clear user-facing indication that a remote access tool is being installed 

From the victim’s perspective, very little seems to happen. But at this point, the attacker can now remotely access their computer. 

The after-party: Remote access is established 

Once installed, the ScreenConnect client initiates encrypted outbound connections to ScreenConnect’s relay servers, including a uniquely assigned instance domain.

That connection gives the attacker the same level of access as a remote IT technician, including the ability to: 

• See the victim’s screen in real time
• Control the mouse and keyboard 
• Upload or download files 
• Keep access even after the computer is restarted 

Because ScreenConnect is legitimate software commonly used for remote support, its presence isn’t always obvious. On a personal computer, the first signs are often behavioral, such as unexplained cursor movement, windows opening on their own, or a ScreenConnect process the user doesn’t remember installing. 

Why this scam works 

This campaign is effective because it targets normal, predictable human behavior. From a behavioral security standpoint, it exploits our natural curiosity and appears to be a low risk. 

Most people don’t think of invitations as dangerous. Opening one feels passive, like glancing at a flyer or checking a message, not installing software. 

Even security-aware users are trained to watch out for warnings and pressure. A friendly “you’re invited” message doesn’t trigger those alarms. 

By the time something feels off, the software is already installed. 

Signs your computer may be affected 

Watch for: 

• A download or executed file named RSVPPartyInvitationCard.msi 
• An unexpected installation of ScreenConnect Client 
• A Windows service named ScreenConnect Client with random characters  
• Your computer makes outbound HTTPS connections to ScreenConnect relay domains 
• Your system resolves the invitation-hosting domain used in this campaign, xnyr[.]digital 

How to stay safe  

This campaign is a reminder that modern attacks often don’t break in—they’re invited in. Remote access tools give attackers deep control over a system. Acting quickly can limit the damage.  

For individuals 

If you receive an email like this: 

• Be suspicious of invitations that ask you to download or open software 
• Never run MSI files from unsolicited emails 
• Verify invitations through another channel before opening anything 

If you already clicked or ran the file:  

• Disconnect from the internet immediately 
• Check for ScreenConnect and uninstall it if present 
• Run a full security scan 
• Change important passwords from a clean, unaffected device 

For organisations (especially in the UK) 

• Alert on unauthorized ScreenConnect installations
• Restrict MSI execution where feasible 
• Treat “remote support tools” as high-risk software
• Educate users: invitations don’t come as installers 

This scam works by installing a legitimate remote access tool without clear user intent. That’s exactly the gap Malwarebytes is designed to catch.

Malwarebytes now detects newly installed remote access tools and alerts you when one appears on your system. You’re then given a choice: confirm that the tool is expected and trusted, or remove it if it isn’t.

---

We don’t just report on threats—we remove them

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your devices by downloading Malwarebytes today.

“You’re invited!” 

It sounds friendly, familiar and quite harmless. But in a scam we recently spotted, that simple phrase is being used to trick victims into installing a full remote access tool on their Windows computers—giving attackers complete control of the system. 

What appears to be a casual party or event invitation leads to the silent installation of ScreenConnect, a legitimate remote support tool quietly installed in the background and abused by attackers. 

Here’s how the scam works, why it’s effective, and how to protect yourself. 

The email: A party invitation 

Victims receive an email framed as a personal invitation—often written to look like it came from a friend or acquaintance. The message is deliberately informal and social, lowering suspicion and encouraging quick action. 

In the screenshot below, the email arrived from a friend whose email account had been hacked, but it could just as easily come from a sender you don’t know.

So far, we’ve only seen this campaign targeting people in the UK, but there’s nothing stopping it from expanding elsewhere. 

Clicking the link in the email leads to a polished invitation page hosted on an attacker-controlled domain. 

The invite: The landing page that leads to an installer 

The landing page leans heavily into the party theme, but instead of showing event details, the page nudges the user toward opening a file. None of them look dangerous on their own, but together they keep the user focused on the “invitation” file: 

• A bold “You’re Invited!” headline 
• The suggestion that a friend had sent the invitation 
• A message saying the invitation is best viewed on a Windows laptop or desktop
• A countdown suggesting your invitation is already “downloading” 
• A message implying urgency and social proof (“I opened mine and it was so easy!”) 

Within seconds, the browser is redirected to download RSVPPartyInvitationCard.msi 

The page even triggers the download automatically to keep the victim moving forward without stopping to think. 

This MSI file isn’t an invitation. It’s an installer. 

The guest: What the MSI actually does 

When the user opens the MSI file, it launches msiexec.exe and silently installs ScreenConnect Client, a legitimate remote access tool often used by IT support teams.  

There’s no invitation, RSVP form, or calendar entry. 

What happens instead: 

• ScreenConnect binaries are installed under C:\Program Files (x86)\ScreenConnect Client\ 
• A persistent Windows service is created (for example, ScreenConnect Client 18d1648b87bb3023) 
• ScreenConnect installs multiple .NET-based components 
• There is no clear user-facing indication that a remote access tool is being installed 

From the victim’s perspective, very little seems to happen. But at this point, the attacker can now remotely access their computer. 

The after-party: Remote access is established 

Once installed, the ScreenConnect client initiates encrypted outbound connections to ScreenConnect’s relay servers, including a uniquely assigned instance domain.

That connection gives the attacker the same level of access as a remote IT technician, including the ability to: 

• See the victim’s screen in real time
• Control the mouse and keyboard 
• Upload or download files 
• Keep access even after the computer is restarted 

Because ScreenConnect is legitimate software commonly used for remote support, its presence isn’t always obvious. On a personal computer, the first signs are often behavioral, such as unexplained cursor movement, windows opening on their own, or a ScreenConnect process the user doesn’t remember installing. 

Why this scam works 

This campaign is effective because it targets normal, predictable human behavior. From a behavioral security standpoint, it exploits our natural curiosity and appears to be a low risk. 

Most people don’t think of invitations as dangerous. Opening one feels passive, like glancing at a flyer or checking a message, not installing software. 

Even security-aware users are trained to watch out for warnings and pressure. A friendly “you’re invited” message doesn’t trigger those alarms. 

By the time something feels off, the software is already installed. 

Signs your computer may be affected 

Watch for: 

• A download or executed file named RSVPPartyInvitationCard.msi 
• An unexpected installation of ScreenConnect Client 
• A Windows service named ScreenConnect Client with random characters  
• Your computer makes outbound HTTPS connections to ScreenConnect relay domains 
• Your system resolves the invitation-hosting domain used in this campaign, xnyr[.]digital 

How to stay safe  

This campaign is a reminder that modern attacks often don’t break in—they’re invited in. Remote access tools give attackers deep control over a system. Acting quickly can limit the damage.  

For individuals 

If you receive an email like this: 

• Be suspicious of invitations that ask you to download or open software 
• Never run MSI files from unsolicited emails 
• Verify invitations through another channel before opening anything 

If you already clicked or ran the file:  

• Disconnect from the internet immediately 
• Check for ScreenConnect and uninstall it if present 
• Run a full security scan 
• Change important passwords from a clean, unaffected device 

For organisations (especially in the UK) 

• Alert on unauthorized ScreenConnect installations
• Restrict MSI execution where feasible 
• Treat “remote support tools” as high-risk software
• Educate users: invitations don’t come as installers 

This scam works by installing a legitimate remote access tool without clear user intent. That’s exactly the gap Malwarebytes is designed to catch.

Malwarebytes now detects newly installed remote access tools and alerts you when one appears on your system. You’re then given a choice: confirm that the tool is expected and trusted, or remove it if it isn’t.

---

We don’t just report on threats—we remove them

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your devices by downloading Malwarebytes today.

Deceptive-Auditing is a tool that deploys Active Directory honeypots and automatically enables auditing for those honeypots.

The post Deceptive-Auditing: An Active Directory Honeypots Tool appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

Keeping websites and applications secure starts with knowing which vulnerabilities exist, how severe they are, and whether they affect your stack. That’s exactly where the CVE program shines. Below, we’ll cover some CVE fundamentals, including what they are, how to search and understand the data, and how to translate this information into actionable steps.

Introduction to the CVE database
So, what is CVE?

CVE stands for Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures, a community-driven program that assigns unique identifiers to publicly known vulnerabilities.

Continue reading A Beginner’s Guide to the CVE Database at Sucuri Blog.

Imagine this: You’re an attacker ready to get their hands on valuable data that you can sell to afford going on a sweet vacation. You do your research, your recon, everything, ensuring that there’s no way this can go wrong. The day of the attack, you brew some coffee, crack your knuckles, and get started. A few hours into the service scan, you come to realize that all the network ports are open, but in use.

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But what if we need to wrangle Windows Event Logs for more than one system? In part 2, we’ll wrangle EVTX logs at scale by incorporating Hayabusa and SOF-ELK into my rapid endpoint investigation workflow (“REIW”)! 

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Remember the good ‘ol days of Zip drives, Winamp, the advent of “Office 365,” and copy machines that didn’t understand email authentication? Okay, maybe they weren’t so good! For a […]

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An Infosec Survival Guide Resource, released as blog posts, with fully designed, printer-friendly PDF cheatsheets.

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DNS Triage is a reconnaissance tool that finds information about an organization's infrastructure, software, and third-party services as fast as possible. The goal of DNS Triage is not to exhaustively find every technology asset that exists on the internet. The goal is to find the most commonly abused items of interest for real attackers.

The post DNS Triage Cheatsheet appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

GraphRunner is a collection of post-exploitation PowerShell modules for interacting with the Microsoft Graph API. It provides modules for enumeration, exfiltration, persistence, and more!

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Burp Suite is an intercepting HTTP proxy that can also scan a web-based service for vulnerabilities. A tool like this is indispensable for testing web applications. Burp Suite is written in Java and comes bundled with a JVM, so it works on any operating system you're likely to use.

The post Burp Suite Cheatsheet appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

Impacket is an extremely useful tool for post exploitation. It is a collection of Python scripts that provides low-level programmatic access to the packets and for some protocols, such as DCOM, Kerberos, SMB1, and MSRPC, the protocol implementation itself.

The post Impacket Cheatsheet appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

Wireshark is an incredible tool used to read and analyze network traffic coming in and out of an endpoint. Additionally, it can load previously captured traffic to assist with troubleshooting network issues or analyze malicious traffic to help determine what a threat actor is doing on your network.

The post Wireshark Cheatsheet appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

Hashcat is a powerful tool for recovering lost passwords, and, thanks to GPU acceleration, it’s one of the fastest. It works by rapidly trying different password guesses to determine the original password from its scrambled (hashed) version.

The post Hashcat Cheatsheet appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

Offensive Purpose: Efficient way to gather info about web services & their hosting infrastructure. Automates taking screenshots for quick & easy review.

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Nmap is a powerful open-source tool commonly used by system/network administrators and security professionals to perform network discovery, security auditing, and basic vulnerability assessment.

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Netcat is a network utility tool that has earned the nickname "The Swiss Army Knife" of networking. It can be used for file transfers, chat/messaging between systems, port scanning, and much more.

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Active Directory Certificate Services (ADCS) is used to manage certificates for systems, users, applications, and more in an enterprise environment. Misconfigurations in ADCS can introduce critical vulnerabilities into an enterprise Active Directory environment.

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One tool that I can't live without when performing a penetration test in an Active Directory environment is called NetExec. Being able to efficiently authenticate against multiple systems in the network is crucial, and NetExec is an incredibly powerful tool that helps automate a lot of this activity.

The post Getting Started with NetExec: Streamlining Network Discovery and Access appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..