Emotet has returned with additional modules that have been specifically designed to improve the malware’s evasion capabilities, a cybersecurity researcher warned.

In a Twitter thread this past Saturday, IT security expert Marcus Hutchins, known as MalwareTech, said botnets that have been dormant for several months have been reactivated.

One botnet he described as E2, for example, has a module designed to steal email data, while another targets system credentials. Although it originally emerged as a banking Trojan akin to Trickbot and has already been rewritten several times before, Hutchins noted Emotet appears to have undergone a complete overhaul.

Hashbusting Comes Into Play

Among the techniques embedded into botnet E2’s modules is hashbusting. By making sure each malware’s file hash looks different on every system it infects, it becomes more difficult to track it, Hutchins explained.

The cybercriminals behind the variant have also made it simpler to mutate the malware by obfuscating code flow via a state machine, he added.

This means a randomized state value can control the flow of code blocks. They are placed in an arbitrary manner, increasing the challenges for security leaders and their teams. The malware’s authors achieve this by flattening the branches into nested loops.

All this means whoever updated the malware may be getting ready to launch an attack campaign, Hutchins concluded.

Emotet has emerged as a popular tool for hackers. Earlier this month, Microsoft reported an attack where the malware brought down an entire network. In February, another variant was using wireless local area networks (WLANs) as a distribution method.

Protect Yourself From Emotet Variants

Like many similar cyberthreats, Emotet has largely been driven by phishing emails that trick victims into clicking on a link that launches the malware.

While security awareness training can help here, IT security teams can improve their odds of detecting suspicious activity by using the logging and alerting capabilities of a security information and event management (SIEM) solution. Deploying multifactor authentication (MFA) is another best practice worth applying.