Emotet malware is back and rebuilding its botnet via TrickBot

LASER_oneXM

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The Emotet malware was considered the most widely spread malware in the past, using spam campaigns and malicious attachments to distribute the malware.

Emotet would then use infected devices to perform other spam campaigns and install other payloads, such as the QakBot (Qbot) and Trickbot malware. These payloads would then be used to provide initial access to threat actors to deploy ransomware, including Ryuk, Conti, ProLock, Egregor, and many others.

At the beginning of the year, an international law enforcement action coordinated by Europol and Eurojust took over the Emotet infrastructure and arrested two individuals.
German law enforcement used the infrastructure to deliver an Emotet module that uninstalled the malware from infected devices on April 25th, 2021.

Emotet returns after law enforcement operation​

Today, researchers from Cryptolaemus, GData, and Advanced Intel have begun to see the TrickBot malware dropping a loader for Emotet on infected devices.
 

LASER_oneXM

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The Emotet malware kicked into action yesterday after a ten-month hiatus with multiple spam campaigns delivering malicious documents to mailboxes worldwide.

Emotet is a malware infection that is distributed through spam campaigns with malicious attachments. If a user opens the attachment, malicious macros or JavaScript will download the Emotet DLL and load it into memory using PowerShell.

Once loaded, the malware will search for and steal emails to use in future spam campaigns and drop additional payloads such as TrickBot or Qbot that commonly lead to ransomware infections.

Emotet spamming begins again​

Last night, cybersecurity researcher Brad Duncan published a SANS Handler Diary on how the Emotet botnet had begun spamming multiple email campaigns to infect devices with the Emotet malware.
 

Shadowra

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I wouldn't be surprised.
When TrickBot was stopped, the operators behind the Trojan were helped by Emotet.
Since Emotet is back, it's TrickBot who returns the device.

Obviously, not all the actors behind Emotet have been arrested.....
I hope he won't do too much damage like before and that the security solutions stop him quickly.
 
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