Emotet Malware | They dismantle part of the dangerous banking Trojan network

In a joint police action European This Wednesday, January 27, the tool was dismantled cybercriminality “most dangerous in the world”: Emotet. The malware It is used to hack computer systems and steal confidential data.

Emotet, it worked like software of type botnet, a computer program that infects a computer network and allows them to be controlled remotely, they said Europol and the homologous judicial body Eurojust.

Police officers from Great Britain, Canada, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Ukraine and the United States worked together to infiltrate in the Emotet infrastructure.

Considered “the Program malicious the most dangerous (malware) in the world, ”Europol said in a statement that“ law enforcement and judicial authorities around the world have this week disrupted one of the most significant botnets of the past decade ”.

The network of Emotet it had several hundred servers which were used to “manage the computers of infected victims, spread to new ones and serve other criminal groups,” Europol said. “Researchers have now taken control of their infrastructure as part of coordinated international action,” he added.

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What made Emotet particularly dangerous was the fact that it was offered for “rental” to other “high level” criminals, which then used this “opener” to install other types of malware, Europol said.

Among them, the famous “Trojans” banking that steal banking data and credentials, and kidnapping programs (ransomware), which lock down files and systems and demand a large ransom. In recent months, cybercriminals have used files attached to emails to trick victims into masquerading as bills or information on Covid-19.

What has attracted the attention in addition to Internet users is the deplorable State in which these cybercriminals lived and operated despite having made their fortune with their scams.

How Emotet attacks

Emotet successfully converted the email to attack vector. Through a fully automated process, Emotet malware is delivered to victims’ computers via email attachments. It uses a variety of “lures“to deceive unsuspecting users: banking information, health information, payment vouchers, invoices with deadlines, etc.

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All of these emails contain Word documents they are malicious. These can be real attachments or links to other websites. Once a user opens one of these documents, they may be prompted to “enable macros“so that the malicious code hidden in the Word file can execute and install the Emotet malware on the victim’s computer.

Emotet is the gateway for other malware such as Trojans, ransomware or Phishing are applied.

It is essential to maintain updated The operating systems to their latest version and at the same time update the antivirus definitions. It is important to pay attention to attached files and not to download or run without first checking files or links to emails from unknown senders.