Emotet infections and follow-up malware

Published: 2019-01-16. Last Updated: 2021-01-07 21:45:22 UTC
by Brad Duncan (Version: 1)

Introduction

Three major campaigns using malicious spam (malspam) to distribute malware stopped sending malspam before Christmas-sometime during the week ending on Sunday 2018-12-23. These three campaigns are Emotet (also known as Feodo), Hancitor (also known as Chanitor or Tordal), and Trickbot. But this week, all three campaigns have been sending out malspam again.

Among these campaigns, Emotet is by far the most active. Dozens of indicators are discovered every day as vectors for Emotet infections. Emotet also acts a distributor for other families of malware. So far in 2019, I’ve seen Emotet retrieve Gootkit and the IcedID banking Trojan. As 2019 progresses, I expect to find examples of Emotet distributing other families of malware like Qakbot and Trickbot, something we saw in 2018.

Today’s diary examines recent Emotet malspam and two examples of infection traffic from Tuesday 2019-01-15.

Shown above: Chain of events for Emotet malware distribution seen so far this year.

The malspam

As usual, emails pushing Emotet use Microsoft Word documents with malicious macros. On vulnerable Windows hosts, opening these documents in Microsoft Word and enabling macros will attempt an Emotet infection. So far this week, Emotet malspam had a link to download the Word document, or it’s had a Word document directly attached to the email. See the images below for examples.

Shown above: Screenshot 1 of 3 - Emotet malspam with link for Word doc from Tuesday 2019-01-15.

Shown above: Screenshot 2 of 3 - Emotet malspam with link for Word doc from Tuesday 2019-01-15.

Shown above: Screenshot 3 of 3 - Emotet malspam with attached Word doc from Monday 2019-01-14.

Shown above: Example of Word document with macro to infect a vulnerable Windows host with Emotet.

The traffic

Network traffic is typical for what we’ve seen with recent Emotet infections from December 2018. Emotet frequently uses HTTP traffic over non-standard TCP ports (not TCP port 80). This may cause issues when reviewing the infection traffic in Wireshark. Traffic on ports like TCP port 53 (associated with DNS activity like zone transfers) and TCP port 22 (normally associated with SSH) may not be decoded as HTTP in Wireshark. That was the case with two examples of infection traffic I generated on Monday.

Post-infection activity from the first run included Gootkit, which had similar in traffic patterns that I’ve previously documented. Post-infection activity from the second run included IcedID (also known as Bokbot), something I’ve also documented.

Indicators of Compromise (IoCs)

The following are indicators from two infections on Tuesday 2019-01-15. Any malicious URLs, IP addresses, and domain names have been “de-fanged” to avoid issues when viewing today’s diary.

Malware from the first run:

SHA256 hash: 2b8c45af81889ce22ffaf3a78d79a307ce3ab4ebeabbd00bc5982d60a89a2c87

File size: 158,208 bytes
File location: hxxp://mdmshipping[.]org/wp-content/uploads/Clients_transactions/012019/
File name: 190115_invoice.doc
File description: Downloaded Word doc with macro for Emotet

SHA256 hash: 4cb1c0ce3de256e671b096729ae35b65b5f4ac67fe0ca9bbdc27e84aaf25a4d3

File size: 151,552 bytes
File location: hxxp://www.al-bay[.]com/JbDEG76/
File location: C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\tablesvcs\tablesvcs.exe
File description: Emotet executable retrieved by Word macro

SHA256 hash: e1f60b891005dfd0f6738444406c8e57d644cc3ce0154f8d17454c886637dfbd

File size: 151,552 bytes
File location: C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\tablesvcs\tablesvcs.exe
File description: Emotet executable updated after initial infection

SHA256 hash: 9fd057d99bad388e08f3d71c1d78e90b308e0eb656ecaec88cd70d31f723118e

File size: 315,392 bytes
File location: C:\ProgramData\7gYMH.exe
File description: Gootkit executable retrieved by my Emotet-infected host

Malware from the second run:

SHA256 hash: abd3942b115eef97d1dca7bbc05022689ee78090b02fb930d202148b9218323c

File size: 153,088 bytes
File location: hxxp://ciblage-spain[.]es/Transactions/01_19/
File name: 012019_INV_0049.doc
File description: Downloaded Word doc with macro for Emotet

SHA256 hash: a2d4ccd13954f43ab541b10f879f0d8b5fcf4fa24fffa1b08444bd2313242a78

File size: 155,648 bytes
File location: hxxp://starbilisim[.]net/umEgLOOKUD/
File location: C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\pesicy\pesicy.exe
File description: Emotet executable retrieved by Word macro

SHA256 hash: e1f60b891005dfd0f6738444406c8e57d644cc3ce0154f8d17454c886637dfbd

File size: 151,552 bytes
File location: C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\pesicy\pesicy.exe
File description: Emotet executable updated after initial infection

SHA256 hash: 4f519a9e1df4558336263f398c44796cb412e7ef56d3290f0f12b422eb325730

File size: 275,456 bytes
File location: C:\ProgramData\35YXoiR.exe
File description: IcedID executable retrieved by my Emotet-infected host

SHA256 hash: 92352a5a9e473c8939e3a609253f65d3afaa392f872134ba73c3972d2c5e4830

File size: 275,456 bytes
File location: C:\ProgramData\{A2EE4104-C104-4A1F-9FCE-D86635165D72}\floflbjnc.exe
File description: IcedID executable made persistent on my Emotet-infected host

Emotet Infection traffic from the first run:

92.222.210[.]16 port 80 - mdmshipping[.]org - GET /wp-content/uploads/Clients_transactions/012019/
149.255.58[.]108 port 80 - www.al-bay[.]com - GET /JbDEG76
149.255.58[.]108 port 80 - www.al-bay[.]com - GET /JbDEG76/
189.146.157[.]111 port 20 - Attempted TCP connections (no response from the server)
216.244.228[.]62 port 53 - 216.244.228[.]62:53 - GET /
187.163.177[.]194 port 22 - Attempted TCP connections (no response from the server)
181.164.8[.]8 port 22 - 181.164.8[.]8:22 - GET /
189.129.134[.]124 port 20 - Attempted TCP connections (no response from the server)
189.225.146[.]180 port 8443 - 189.225.146[.]180:8443 - GET /

Gootkit infection traffic from the first run:

66.23.200[.]58 port 443 - mid.centralcoastbagels[.]com - HTTPS/SSL/TLS traffic
DNS query for loredanusos[.]com - response: No such name
DNS query for bigiterra[.]com - response: No such name
DNS query for getlowfast[.]com - response: No such name

Emotet infection traffic from the second run:

87.98.154[.]146 port 80 - ciblage-spain[.]es - GET /Transactions/01_19
87.98.154[.]146 port 80 - ciblage-spain[.]es - GET /Transactions/01_19/
149.255.58[.]108 port 80 - www.al-bay[.]com - GET /JbDEG76
149.255.58[.]108 port 80 - www.al-bay[.]com - GET /cgi-sys/suspendedpage.cgi
159.253.42[.]200 port 80 - starbilisim[.]net - GET /umEgLOOKUD
159.253.42[.]200 port 80 - starbilisim[.]net - GET /umEgLOOKUD/
187.163.177[.]194 port 22 - Attempted TCP connections (no response from the server)
181.164.8[.]8 port 22 - 181.164.8[.]8:22 - GET /
189.129.134[.]124 port 20 - Attempted TCP connections (no response from the server)
189.225.146[.]180 port 8443 - Attempted TCP connections (no response from the server)
66.50.57[.]73 port 8080 - 66.50.57[.]73:8080 - GET /
186.15.66[.]98 port 443 - 186.15.66[.]98:443 - GET /
181.211.11[.]171 port 443 - 181.211.11[.]171:443 - GET /