Intelligent CIO Europe Issue 39 | Page 31

INFOGRAPHIC deploy further illicit activities such as data theft and extortion through ransomware .
The EMOTET group managed to take email as an attack vector to a next level .
Through a fully automated process , EMOTET malware was delivered to the victims ’ computers via infected email attachments . A variety of different lures were
Law enforcement and judicial authorities gained control of the infrastructure and took it down from the inside .
used to trick unsuspecting users into opening these malicious attachments .
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 . What made EMOTET so dangerous is that the malware was offered for hire to other cybercriminals to install other types of malware , such as banking Trojans or ransomwares , onto a victim ’ s computer .
Law enforcement and judicial authorities gained control of the infrastructure and took it down from the inside .
The infected machines of victims have been redirected towards this law enforcement-controlled infrastructure . This is a unique and new approach to effectively disrupt the activities of the facilitators of cybercrime . p
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