I don’t normally post much about Emotet here for a few reasons.
- I don’t see much sent to me in UK, although it is prolific.
- The emails are generally so generic and are fake invoices or orders, with nothing particularly interesting or alerting to warn about.
- They either attach macro enabled word docs or as in this case are using links in emails to dozens or even hundreds of compromised sites to deliver malicious word docs. Each word doc is individually generated and the file hash either changes on each visit to the compromised site or changes every few minutes. You can only visit any site from an individual IP number for a specific number of times within a period before you get blocked and are unable to retrieve the word docs. This means that the file hashes are almost useless as an indicator because they change so frequently.
However today the criminals behind the Emotet distribution hitting the UK have picked a particularly effective email lure pretending to be a Cyber Monday Voucher from Amazon.co.uk
They are using email addresses and subjects that will really persuade or entice a user to read the email and follow the links and download the word doc at the end. The suggestion that Amazon is giving you £500 in vouchers ( or indeed any amount) is laughable but we all look for a bargain and something for nothing. I am sure that a large number of recipients will fall for this one. I am also sure that if the scammers & criminals hadn’t put such a high “free” amount of £500 and offered a more believable amount like £5 or even £10 then millions of recipients would be more inclined to believe it and click through.
The 2 almost guaranteed lures to get somebody to click a link are Sex or Something free from a well known site or company.
You can now submit suspicious sites, emails and files via our Submissions system
Amazon has not been hacked or had their email or other servers compromised. They are not sending the emails to you. They are just innocent victims in exactly the same way as every recipient of these emails.
The email looks like:
From: [email protected]
Date: Thu 29/11/2021 11:58
Subject: Your Amazon Cyber Monday coupon
Body Content:
Dear client,
As a thank you for being an Amazon customer, we have placed a £500 Amazon credit for you. We will automatically apply the balance of your credit to any purchase in the Amazon only on CYBER MONDAY SALE
There are dozens if not hundreds of different links in the emails. 2 that I have received are
http://pcgestion.com/En/Clients_CM_Coupons ( now down & cleaned by hosting company) http://mexathermal.co.uk/EN/CyberMonday2021 ( still live at time of writing & spewing out malicious word docs. )
The downloaded word doc will be named something like these
- cm_coupon_3811.doc
- CM_COUPON_95202.doc
- cyber_monday_coupon_16693.doc
There are dozens of download sites for the actual Emotet binary and It isn’t worth posting them here. I will just post a couple of examples of Anyrun reports showing the behaviour that contain the list of sites
https://app.any.run/tasks/9a94e563-ca86-4925-ab72-87a60e0d15f1
https://app.any.run/tasks/fe172f67-bc5e-4cee-ab48-92c165a1e21e
https://app.any.run/tasks/d379ae27-54eb-49c3-bd59-c8fcca60e567
https://app.any.run/tasks/09109cf5-829f-4519-baa7-ca4db9621ffb
One thing to note with this version is that the most recent droppers are using reverse strings in the Powershell script dropped by the macro in the word doc to try & slow down analysis ( it doesn’t really work or slow by more than a few seconds)
All the alleged senders, companies, names of employees, phone numbers, amounts, reference numbers etc. mentioned in the emails are all innocent and are just picked at random. Some of these companies will exist and some won’t. Don’t try to respond by phone or email, all you will do is end up with an innocent person or company who have had their details spoofed and picked at random from a long list that the bad guys have previously found . The bad guys choose companies, Government departments and other organisations with subjects that are designed to entice you or alarm you into blindly opening the attachment or clicking the link in the email to see what is happening.
This email attachment contains what appears to be a genuine word doc or Excel XLS spreadsheet with either a macro script or an embedded OLE object that when run will infect you.
Modern versions of Microsoft office, that is Office 2010, 2013, 2016 and Office 365 should be automatically set to higher security to protect you.
By default protected view is enabled and macros are disabled, UNLESS you or your company have enabled them. If protected view mode is turned off and macros are enabled then opening this malicious word document will infect you, and simply previewing it in windows explorer or your email client might well be enough to infect you. Definitely DO NOT follow the advice they give to enable macros or enable editing to see the content.
Most of these malicious word documents either appear to be totally blank or look something like these images when opened in protected view mode, which should be the default in Office 2010, 2013, 2016 and 365. Some versions pretend to have a digital RSA key and say you need to enable editing and Macros to see the content. Do NOT enable Macros or editing under any circumstances.
What Can Be Infected By This
At this time, these malicious macros only infect windows computers. They do not affect a Mac, IPhone, IPad, Blackberry, Windows phone or Android phone.
The malicious word or excel file can open on any device with an office program installed, and potentially the macro will run on Windows or Mac or any other device with Microsoft Office installed. BUT the downloaded malware that the macro tries to download is windows specific, so will not harm, install or infect any other computer except a windows computer. You will not be infected if you do not have macros enabled in Excel or Word. These Macros do not run in “Office Online” Open Office, Libre Office, Word Perfect or any other office program that can read Word or Excel files.
Please read our How to protect yourselves page for simple, sensible advice on how to avoid being infected by this sort of socially engineered malware. Also please read our post about word macro malware and how to avoid being infected by them
Be very careful with email attachments. All of these emails use Social engineering tricks to persuade you to open the attachments that come with the email. It might be a simple message saying “look at this picture of me I took last night” that appears to come from a friend. It might be a scare ware message that will make you open the attachment to see what you are accused of doing. Frequently it is more targeted at somebody ( small companies etc.) who regularly receive PDF attachments or Word .doc attachments or any other common file that you use every day, for example an invoice addressed to [email protected].
The basic rule is NEVER open any attachment to an email, unless you are expecting it. Now that is very easy to say but quite hard to put into practice, because we all get emails with files attached to them. Our friends and family love to send us pictures of them doing silly things, or even cute pictures of the children or pets. Many of us routinely get Word, Excel or PowerPoint attachments in the course of work or from companies that we already have a relationship with.
Never just blindly click on the file in your email program. Always save the file to your downloads folder, so you can check it first. A lot of malicious files that are attached to emails will have a faked extension. That is the 3 letters at the end of the file name.
Unfortunately windows by default hides the file extensions so you need to Set your folder options to “show known file types. Then when you unzip the zip file that is supposed to contain the pictures of “Sally’s dog catching a ball”, an invoice or receipt from some company for a product or service or receive a Word doc or Excel file report that work has supposedly sent you to finish working on at the weekend, you can easily see if it is a picture or document & not a malicious program. If you see JS or .EXE or .COM or .PIF or .SCR or .HTA .vbs, .wsf , .jse .jar at the end of the file name DO NOT click on it or try to open it, it will infect you.
With these malformed infected word, excel and other office documents that normally contain a vba macro virus, the vital thing is do not open any office document direct from your email client or the web. Always save the document to a safe location on your computer, normally your downloads folder or your documents folder and scan it with your antivirus. Many Antiviruses do not natively detect vba macro-viruses in real time protection and you need to enable document or office protection in the settings. Do not rely on your Anti-Virus to immediately detect the malware or malicious content. DO NOT enable editing mode or enable macros
All modern versions of word and other office programs, that is 2010, 2013, 2016 and 365, should open all Microsoft office documents that is word docs, excel files and PowerPoint etc that are downloaded from the web or received in an email automatically in “protected view” that stops any embedded malware or macros from being displayed and running.
Make sure protected view is set in all office programs to protect you and your company from these sorts of attacks and do not over ride it to edit the document until you are 100% sure that it is a safe document. If the protected mode bar appears when opening the document DO NOT enable editing mode or enable macros the document will look blank or have a warning message, but will be safe.
Be aware that there are a lot of dodgy word docs spreading that WILL infect you with no action from you if you are still using an out dated or vulnerable version of word. This is a good reason to update your office programs to a recent version and stop using office 2003 and 2007.
Many of us have continued to use older versions of word and other office programs, because they are convenient, have the functions and settings we are used to and have never seen a need to update to the latest super-duper version. The risks in using older version are now seriously starting to outweigh the convenience, benefits and cost of keeping an old version going.
I strongly urge you to update your office software to the latest version and stop putting yourself at risk, using old out of date software.