Cyber Security
Protecting your Organization from Emotet and the Omnatuor Malvertising Network

Written by Mohammed Al-Moneer, Regional Director, META at Infoblox
In the last edition of our Quarterly Cyber Threat Intelligence Report, Infoblox brings into focus and provides insights into two major cyber threats that organizations should be aware of – Emotet and Omnatuor Malvertising Network.
EMOTET
Emotet is a notorious malware family that has evolved significantly over the years: from a simple banking trojan to a botnet to an infrastructure for content delivery. Infoblox has been monitoring Emotet and providing insights into its activity all along. Emotet has been around since 2014. It survived its January 2021 takedown by law enforcement agencies from the Netherlands, UK, and US and from Germany, France, Lithuania, Canada, and Ukraine. During the takedown, Emotet was offline for 11 months.
The frequency of Emotet-related malspam campaigns increased from January to May 2022 as the malware authors changed techniques to evade Microsoft’s increasing countermeasures on VBA Macro security. The Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics was attacked on 12 June 2022, and recent reports put Emotet back at the top of the list of malware families with an impact that spans the globe. A consistent feature of Emotet has been its use of email as a delivery vector. Microsoft Office documents have been the attachments of choice, and Excel files have been the most prevalent of these documents.
Infoblox’s analysis indicates that the actors behind Emotet have made some attempts to protect the network from further takedowns. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the use of compromised websites and of email as a delivery vector has persisted, and this has enabled us to reliably identify and track Emotet’s activity. Infoblox’s view of the threat landscape affords a detailed understanding of not only the current prevalence of Emotet in malspam, but also of the location and services used in its infrastructure.
As our company continues to research and monitor Emotet’s behavior, it will provide protection by denying access to the compromised domains used to host the Emotet payload, and it will offer vital, actionable intelligence on Emotet’s C&C infrastructure.
We recommend the following actions for protection from this kind of attack:
- To mitigate the risk of infection from known threats, keep security software up to
date and patched. - Conduct security awareness training in the organization. It is important for
everyone to be up to date with the latest techniques used by attackers to trick
users who receive malicious emails. - Enhance network perimeter security. 99% of successful attacks involve some
type of network communication. Having the right tools in place can help identify
and minimize the impact of a threat like Emotet before they cause damage
OMNATUOR MALVERTISING NETWORK
For some time, the Infoblox Threat Intelligence Group has been tracking a malvertising network (the “Omnatuor Malvertising Network”) that not only abuses push notifications, pop-ups, and redirects within a browser but continues to serve ads even after the user navigates away from the initial page.
Omnatuor has been dismissed by the security community as adware, a label that implies the activity is largely a nuisance. This naive response underestimates the danger of the potential threat posed by malvertising in general, and the Omnatuor actor in particular. In addition to its ability to persist, the network delivers dangerous content.
The Omnatuor actor takes advantage of WordPress vulnerabilities and is effective at spreading riskware, spyware, and adware. It uses an extensive infrastructure and has a broad reach into networks across the globe. The Omnatuor domain has a suspiciously high breadth and query volumes.
An initial look into WHOIS data revealed the domain was created on 12 July 2021. Since being registered it was present in 45% to 48% of all customer networks and surpassed 50% at various times. Most networks contained tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of queries for the domain. From July 2021 to July 2022, we observed just over 25.4 million unique, resolved queries to omnatuor[.]com.
This campaign compromises vulnerable WordPress sites through embedded malicious JavaScript or PHP code. The code redirects users or otherwise forces them to view and click malvertisements via pop-ups and push notifications.
We recommend that users take the following preventive measures:
- To assist in blocking known malvertising efforts, leverage the GitHub repository of indicators associated with the Omnatuor Malvertising Network.32 Infoblox offers a sample of indicators in this article and will continue to update the GitHub repository as new indicators are discovered.
- Use an adblocker program, such as UBlock Origin. The adware is delivered via an inline script, and blocking only the domains and IP addresses at a firewall or DNS level will not stop push notifications, redirects, or pop-ups. Because the DNS query cannot be completed, the contents of those vectors will not load; however, the browsing experience will still be interrupted.
- Disable JavaScript entirely, or use a web extension (such as NoScript) to enable JavaScript only on trusted sites.
Cloud
SentinelOne Simplifies Secure Cloud Migrations on AWS

SentinelOne today announced its participation in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Workload Migration Program. This initiative supports AWS Partner Network (APN) members with SaaS offerings on AWS to accelerate and streamline workload migrations.
Through the program, SentinelOne will provide AWS customers with accelerated, secure cloud migration support, leveraging modern AI-powered CNAPP capabilities to ensure rapid and protected transitions. With access to AWS funding, technical resources, and go-to-market support, SentinelOne will help organizations reduce migration timelines and costs while maintaining robust security.
SentinelOne’s Singularity Cloud Security delivers real-time visibility and protection throughout the migration journey—whether from on-premises or another cloud—enabling a secure, seamless transition to AWS.
“Through our participation in the AWS ISV Workload Migration Program, SentinelOne is helping customers accelerate secure cloud migrations with end-to-end protection and visibility,” said Ric Smith, President of Product, Technology, and Operations at SentinelOne. “Whether moving from on-prem or another cloud to AWS, organizations can count on us to deliver the security they need throughout their journey—realizing the performance, speed, agility, and cost benefits of the cloud.”
Singularity Cloud Security combines agentless and agent-based protection for deep visibility, continuous posture management, and real-time threat detection across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. By collaborating with AWS and ecosystem partners, SentinelOne ensures seamless integration into migration projects, helping customers move faster, reduce risk, and scale confidently in the cloud.
Availability: SentinelOne’s solutions are available globally.
Cyber Security
Beyond Blocklists: How Behavioural Intent Analysis Can Safeguard Middle East Businesses from Rising AI-Driven Bot Threats

The Middle East is facing an unprecedented surge in AI-driven bot attacks, with malicious automation now outpacing traditional defenses. Mohammad Ismail, Vice President for EMEA at Cequence Security, warns that legacy tools like IP blocklists and rate limiting are no match for today’s sophisticated threats (more…)
Cyber Security
Sophos Boosts Firewall with New Protection and Incident Response Features

Sophos has announced a significant update to its Sophos Firewall software, introducing enhanced protection and incident response capabilities. This update notably includes Sophos NDR Essential, a new feature now available free of charge to all customers holding an XStream Protection license for Sophos Firewall.
This integration empowers Sophos Firewall with two dedicated artificial intelligence (AI) engines specifically designed to detect both malware communications and those utilizing algorithmically generated domain names. This advanced functionality, derived from the Sophos Network Detection and Response (NDR) probe, aims to identify sophisticated malware communications even if they are previously unknown or not yet indexed. It serves as a powerful complement to the Active Threat Response capabilities already embedded within Sophos firewalls.

Chris McCormack, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Sophos
Addressing the technical demands of such advanced detection, Chris McCormack, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Sophos, explained the strategic approach, “NDR traffic analysis requires substantial processing power. That’s why we’ve adopted a new approach by deploying an NDR solution in Sophos Cloud to offload the heaviest tasks from the firewall.” This cloud-centric design ensures optimal performance without burdening the firewall’s on-device resources.
Beyond network detection, the update also brings significant improvements to connectivity and user authentication. Sophos Connect now integrates EntraID for Single Sign-On (SSO). This new feature for the VPN client, bundled with Sophos Firewall, is set to enhance both the security and user experience for SSL and IPsec VPN connections. The integration with EntraID (Azure AD) enables users to authenticate and leverage multi-factor authentication for both Sophos Connect and access to the user portal hosted by the firewall, streamlining secure access.
Further VPN-related enhancements include:
- Improved user interface and usability: Connection types have been renamed for greater clarity, with “site-to-site” now referred to as “policy-based” and tunnel interfaces as “route-based,” making configurations more intuitive.
- Dynamic validation of the IP address pool: For VPN connections (SSL VPN, IPsec, L2TP, and PPTP), the system now dynamically validates the allocated IP address pool, helping to better resolve potential IP address conflicts.
- Strict profile enforcement: IPsec profiles now exclude default values to ensure algorithm synchronization, effectively eliminating potential fragmentation of session negotiation packets that could otherwise prevent site-to-site VPN tunnels from being established.
- Route-based VPN and SD-RED scalability: The system has been optimized to support up to 3,000 simultaneously established tunnels. Specifically, Sophos Firewall solutions can now manage up to 1,000 SD-RED site-to-site tunnels and connect up to 650 concurrent SD-RED devices.
Additional management improvements enhance administrative flexibility and search capabilities:
- More flexible DHCP Prefix Delegation (IPv6 DHCP-PD): The system now supports a broader range of prefixes, from /48 to /64, improving compatibility with various internet service providers.
- Router Advertisement (RA) and DHCPv6 server: These features are now enabled by default, simplifying IPv6 network setup.
- Resizable table columns: The web admin interface continues its adaptation for ultra-wide screens, with many configuration pages now allowing users to resize columns as needed for improved usability.
- Enhanced object search functionality: The search field within the SD-WAN routing configuration screen now supports more granular criteria, including route name, ID, objects, and object values like IP addresses and domains. Similarly, local ACL rules now also support object name and value searches, extending to content-based searches for more precise results.
- Default configuration changes: To streamline initial setups, default firewall rules and rule groups previously created during new firewall deployments have been removed. The initial configuration now only includes the default network rule and MTA rules. Furthermore, the default firewall rule group and the default gateway probe for custom gateways are now set to “None” by default.
Sophos continues its commitment to cybersecurity through a “Secure by Design” approach, enhancing the intrinsic security of its firewalls. This methodology involves the containerization of specific features and rigorous integrity checks on critical operating system files using mathematical checksums. Any detected checksum mismatch triggers a potential compromise alert, enabling monitoring teams to proactively identify possible security incidents affecting the firewall OS integrity. This proactive detection allows incident response and development teams to react swiftly to critical security events.
This update is now available for manual download and deployment by customers with any Sophos Firewall equipped with a valid license.
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