Emotet botnet activity spikes

Emotet botnet malware activity has been rising even further in recent months, according to BleepingComputer. Malicious emails spreading Emotet have increased from 3,000 in February to 30,000 in March, with English, French, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Slovenian, Hungarian, Polish, and Norwegian languages used in the messages, a Kaspersky report revealed. Moreover, active Emotet campaigns have been observed to leverage discussion thread hijacking techniques similar to campaigns spreading Qbot. "The aim of the email is to convince users to either (i) follow the link and download an archived document and open it — sometimes using a password mentioned in the email, or (ii) simply open an email attachment," said researchers. Another report from Check Point showed that Emotet was the most active and prevalent malware strain last month, with the malware using Easter lures. Moreover, Emotet operators have also transitioned to 64-bit loaders and stealer modules on Epoch 4, the Cryptolaemus security research group found.