Research of Emotet

The EMOTET group managed to take email as an attack vector to a next level. Through a fully automated process, EMOTET malware was delivered to the victims’ computers via infected e-mail attachments. A variety of different lures were used to trick unsuspecting users into opening these malicious attachments. In the past, EMOTET email campaigns have also been presented as invoices, shipping notices and information about COVID-19.

All these emails contained malicious Word documents, either attached to the email itself or downloadable by clicking on a link within the email itself. Once a user opened one of these documents, they could be prompted to “enable macros” so that the malicious code hidden in the Word file could run and install EMOTET malware on a victim’s computer.

EMOTET was much more than just a malware. What made EMOTET so dangerous is that the malware was offered for hire to other cybercriminals to install other types of malware, such as banking Trojans or ransomwares, onto a victim’s computer.

This type of attack is called a ‘loader’ operation, and EMOTET is said to be one of the biggest players in the cybercrime world as other malware operators like TrickBot and Ryuk have benefited from it.

Its unique way of infecting networks by spreading the threat laterally after gaining access to just a few devices in the network made it one of the most resilient malware in the wild.

Adversaries may send spearphishing emails with a malicious link in an attempt to elicit sensitive information and/or gain access to victim systems. Spearphishing with a link is a specific variant of spearphishing. It is different from other forms of spearphishing in that it employs the use of links to download malware contained in email, instead of attaching malicious files to the email itself, to avoid defenses that may inspect email attachments.

All forms of spearphishing are electronically delivered social engineering targeted at a specific individual, company, or industry. In this case, the malicious emails contain links. Generally, the links will be accompanied by social engineering text and require the user to actively click or copy and paste a URL into a browser, leveraging User Execution. The visited website may compromise the web browser using an exploit, or the user will be prompted to download applications, documents, zip files, or even executables depending on the pretext for the email in the first place. Adversaries may also include links that are intended to interact directly with an email reader, including embedded images intended to exploit the end system directly or verify the receipt of an email (i.e. web bugs/web beacons). Links may also direct users to malicious applications designed to Steal Application Access Tokens, like OAuth tokens, in order to gain access to protected applications and information.

How to detect keyloggers?

Detecting keylogger programs on a computer usually involves fairly obvious warning signs: the browser slows down, there are delays when moving the mouse or typing, or the cursor disappears. Even if you use the best privacy browsers, keyloggers can still track your inputs.

How keyloggers infect your device?

Hackers often use social engineering methods to infect victims with keyloggers. A keylogger can infect your device in different ways, sometimes depending on your device type. And even though a spyware removal tool can handle keystroke logger detection, you want to avoid this dangerous type of malware to begin with.

Here’s the general process for how a keylogger infects your device:

1. A cybercriminal sends an infected phishing message, usually through an email attachment, SMS message, or infected website.

2. When you click the link for the infected website or attachment, the keylogger automatically downloads itself onto your device.

3. The keystroke tracker immediately starts to collect your keystrokes, most likely without being detected until you run a keylogger scan.