Emotet is back and hits hard again. Why successful business models don't just disappear from the face of the earth, because many millions of euros have already been earned with Emotet. A comment from Richard Werner, Business Consultant at Trend Micro.
In January 2021, Europol announced that it had succeeded in identifying the Emotet Group's infrastructure and perpetrators. Videos of the police spread on YouTube to signal to the cyber criminals: “We have you.” Money and gold bars, found in Ukraine by the authorities there, were counted and secured in front of the camera. This scene is about psychological tricks intended to signal to cyber criminals: “We'll get you.” Now Emotet is reappearing on the latest news. The surprise is big - really?
Experts expected Emotet to return
Actually no. As early as January, in response to the success of the police investigation, Trend Micro called the effect a “breathing space”, which can be shorter or longer depending on the success of the police. In order to understand the background, you have to know that these criminals are not hoody-wearing, pimply teenagers in Mami's basement. Rather, it is about organized criminals with mafia-like structures. And it's about an underground economy that makes use of the economic principles of buying and selling and is inspired by a marketing machine.
The Emotet business model was successful
Emotet's business model, including the database created by the group, was - from an underground perspective - one of the most successful in recent years. Now there are many ways why it sees the light of day again at precisely this point in time. Is it really the same perpetrators as last time who were unsettled after the takedown? One possibility would be that they simply passed your business on and sold it or that it is used purposefully to provide an alibi for a possible accomplice. Without speculating about the real background at this point, we have to assume that in cybercrime - just as in real business life - successful business models do not simply disappear from the face of the earth. We experience this situation here. Only when we observe the “new” Emotet longer will we be able to draw conclusions about whether it is still the same actors or whether it is a different handwriting.
Emotet strikes relentlessly again, like the report Currently around 5.500 Emotet attacks every day shows.
More at Trendmicro.com
About Trend Micro As one of the world's leading providers of IT security, Trend Micro helps create a secure world for digital data exchange. With over 30 years of security expertise, global threat research, and constant innovation, Trend Micro offers protection for businesses, government agencies, and consumers. Thanks to our XGen™ security strategy, our solutions benefit from a cross-generational combination of defense techniques optimized for leading-edge environments. Networked threat information enables better and faster protection. Optimized for cloud workloads, endpoints, email, the IIoT and networks, our connected solutions provide centralized visibility across the entire enterprise for faster threat detection and response.