Security News > 2020 > January > As Necurs Botnet Falls from Grace, Emotet Rises

A mid-January spam campaign by criminals behind the popular Necurs botnet shows a dramatic drop in skill and savvy by perpetrators.

"Things are changing and with major banking Trojan botnets moving away from Necurs and to distribution through inter-gang collaborations, Necurs has been left behind to distribute amateur spam campaigns in high volumes," IBM X-Force researchers said in a Monday post.

Recently, researchers discovered millions of emails being sent from the Necurs botnet within a matter of hours.

That's been the case with Necurs; however, researchers say that the spam campaign may be indicative of more sophisticated banking trojan operators who were previously using Necurs moving away from the botnet as the malware marketplace shifts.

Despite the recent market shifts that have been impacting Necurs, researchers say there may still be hope for the botnet to regain its cybercrime customers: "The Necurs botnet might be peddling scam spam at this time, but this relatively resilient infrastructure has been serving cybercriminals for over eight years now," they said.

News URL

https://threatpost.com/as-necurs-botnet-falls-from-grace-emotet-rises/152236/