Security researchers have seen attack campaigns using two new variants of IcedID, a banking Trojan program that has been used to deliver ransomware in recent years. The two new variants, one of which appears to be connected to the Emotet botnet, are lighter compared to the standard one because certain functionality has been stripped.

“It is likely a cluster of threat actors is using modified variants to pivot the malware away from typical banking Trojan and banking fraud activity to focus on payload delivery, which likely includes prioritizing ransomware delivery,” researchers from Proofpoint said in a new report. “Additionally, based on artifacts observed in the codebase, timing, and association with Emotet infections, Proofpoint researchers suspect the initial developers of Emotet have partnered with IcedID operators to expand their activities including using the new Lite variant of IcedID that has different, unique functionality and likely testing it via existing Emotet infections.”

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