The sophistication of the Emotet malware's code base and its regularly evolving methods for tricking targets into clicking on malicious links has allowed it to spread widely. "Now, Emotet is adopting yet another way to spread: using already compromised devices to infect devices connected to nearby Wi-Fi networks," reports Ars Technica. From the report: Last month, Emotet operators were caught using an updated version that uses infected devices to enumerate all nearby Wi-Fi networks. It uses a programming interface called wlanAPI to profile the SSID, signal strength, and use of WPA or other encryption methods for password-protecting access. Then, the malware uses one of two password lists to guess commonly used default username and password combinations. After successfully gaining access to a new Wi-Fi network, the infected device enumerates all non-hidden devices that are connected to it. Using a second password list, the malware then tries to guess credentials for each user connected to the drive. In the event that no connected users are infected, the malware tries to guess the password for the administrator of the shared resource.
"With this newly discovered loader-type used by Emotet, a new threat vector is introduced to Emotet's capabilities," researchers from security firm Binary Defense wrote in a recently published post. "Previously thought to only spread through malspam and infected networks, Emotet can use this loader-type to spread through nearby wireless networks if the networks use insecure passwords." The Binary Defense post said the new Wi-Fi spreader has a timestamp of April 2018 and was first submitted to the VirusTotal malware search engine a month later. While the module was created almost two years ago, Binary Defense didn't observe it being used in the wild until last month.
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"With this newly discovered loader-type used by Emotet, a new threat vector is introduced to Emotet's capabilities," researchers from security firm Binary Defense wrote in a recently published post. "Previously thought to only spread through malspam and infected networks, Emotet can use this loader-type to spread through nearby wireless networks if the networks use insecure passwords." The Binary Defense post said the new Wi-Fi spreader has a timestamp of April 2018 and was first submitted to the VirusTotal malware search engine a month later. While the module was created almost two years ago, Binary Defense didn't observe it being used in the wild until last month.
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