This blog post was authored by Jérôme Segura and Hossein Jazi. The 2020 US elections have been the subject of intense scrutiny and emotions, while happening in the middle of a global pandemic. As election night ended and uncertainty regarding the results began to creep in, threat actors decided to jump in on it too. Those tracking the threat landscape know very well that major world events … [Read more...]
November 4, 2020
July 30, 2020
Malspam campaign caught using GuLoader after service relaunch
They say any publicity is good publicity. But perhaps this isn’t true for CloudEye, an Italian firm that claims to provide “the next generation of Windows executables’ protection”. First described by Proofpoint security researchers in March 2020, GuLoader is a downloader used by threat actors to distribute malware on a large scale. In June, CloudEye was exposed by … [Read more...]
July 17, 2020
It’s baaaack: Public cyber enemy Emotet returns to terrorize more victims
This blog post was authored by Jérôme Segura and Hossein Jazi After over four months of absence, the dreaded Emotet has returned with a vengeance. Following several false alarms over the last few weeks, a spam campaign was first spotted on July 13 showing signs of a likely comeback. The Emotet botnets started pushing malspam actively on Friday, July 17, using the same techniques as before. … [Read more...]
May 19, 2020
April 17, 2020
Discord users tempted by bots offering “free Nitro games”
The last few weeks have seen multiple instances of problematic bots appearing in Discord channels. They bring tidings of gifts, but the reality is quite a bit different. Given so many more young kids and teens are at home during the current global lockdown, they may well see this scam bouncing around their chat channels. Worried parents may want to point them in this direction to learn about the … [Read more...]
March 26, 2020
Coronavirus Bitcoin scam promises “millions” working from home
In the last week, we’ve seen multiple coronavirus scams pushed by bad actors, including RAT attacks via fake health advisories, bogus e-books working in tandem with Trojans, and lots of other phishing shenanigans. Now we have another one to add to the ever-growing list: dubious coronavirus Bitcoin missives landing in your inbox. Reworking a classic spam tactic This is a retooling of an older spam … [Read more...]
January 29, 2020
November 26, 2019
September 23, 2019
Emotet malspam campaign uses Snowden’s new book as lure
Exactly one week ago, Emotet, one of the most dangerous threats to organizations in the last year, resumed its malicious spam campaigns after several months of inactivity. Based on our telemetry, we can see that the botnet started becoming chatty with its command and control servers (C2), about a week or so before the spam came through. Figure 1: Communications with Emotet C2s over 90 … [Read more...]
September 16, 2019
Emotet is back: botnet springs back to life with new spam campaign
After a fairly long hiatus that lasted nearly four months, Emotet is back with an active spam distribution campaign. For a few weeks, there were signs that the botnet was setting its gears in motion again, as we observed command and control (C2) server activity. But this morning, the Trojan started pumping out spam, a clear indication it’s ready to jump back into action. The malicious … [Read more...]
