Live
- Punjab CM Maryam Nawaz reviews police passing out parade in uniform
- RBI issues alert against prepaid payment instruments by illegal entities
- Hackers attacked Indian firms on average 2,444 times per week in last 6 months: Report
- US election outcome not to change direction of South Korea-US alliance: Seoul envoy
- 'Manipur Super 50' scores big in providing opportunities to the state's youth
- L&T Technology Services logs Rs 1,304 crore in net profit in FY24
- Rajya Sainik Board-Kolkata empowers deceased veteran's daughter with mobility
- BJP complains to ECI against Abhishek Banerjee for 'abusive' remarks against party candidate
- IPL 2024: RCB elect to bat first against in-form Sunrisers
- Selectors likely to name squad for T20 World Cup this weekend, say BCCI sources
Emotet, the world's deadliest malware taken down
Emotet, the world's deadliest malware taken down
Emotet was first seen in 2014 as a banking Trojan and soon evolved into one of the most powerful malware.
The world's most dangerous malware botnet, "Emotet", has been disrupted through a collective operation that lasted more than two years. Emotet was first seen in 2014 as a banking Trojan and has since become one of the most powerful malware.
Global involvement in taking down Emotet involved Europol, the UK's National Crime Agency, the FBI and law enforcement agencies from the Netherlands, France, Canada, Germany, Lithuania and Ukraine. Shortly after its discovery in 2014, Emotet had become "the go-to solution for cybercriminals over the years," Europol said in a statement.
Hackers could gain access to computer systems through Emotet and carry out data theft and extortion activities. The malware was transferred to users via infected email attachments. Hackers used different ways to get users to open these malicious attachments, Europol added. Emotet's email campaigns were also present in shipping notices, invoices, and Covid-19 information.
"All these emails contained malicious Word documents, either attached to the email itself or downloadable by clicking on a link within the email itself. Once a user opened one of these documents, they could be prompted to "enable macros" so that the malicious code hidden in the Word file could run and install EMOTET malware on a victim's computer," Europol explained.
Emotet posed a greater threat than other malicious programs because it offered to hire other cybercriminals to infect other systems with banking Trojans or ransomware. Other malware operators such as TrickBot and Ryuk are said to have benefited from Emotet.
The collective group of law enforcement agencies took control of the infrastructure from within and redirected the infected systems to this infrastructure. Europol calls this "a unique and novel approach to effectively disrupt the activities of cybercrime facilitators."
Those who may have been affected by this malware can check out this database containing email addresses, usernames, and passwords stolen by Emotet. The information has also been distributed globally through CERTs.
