Trojan Emotet Malware To Attack On Christmas

Lately, it had become quiet about the threatening Trojan Emotet, but now it will be back for Christmas of all times. This is the result of reports that have discovered the Trojan as the main actor in current spam campaigns.

“Emotet returns on time for Christmas after a short break,” report the security researchers from Threat Insight and are now sharing their findings on Twitter, among others. The researchers warn of a new threat posed by the Trojan, which in recent months has caused a great deal of damage, particularly to authorities and companies. “We see more than 100,000 messages in English, German, Spanish, Italian, and more. They use bait for thread hijacking with Word attachments, PW-protected zips, and URLs.”

Emotet is one of the trickiest malware threats

Emotet had already hit the headlines in 2019 because, among other things, it paralyzed the Berlin Court of Justice. Even after replacing the hardware, the court was plagued by problems again and again after the infection. One difficulty with this is that the Trojan spreads like a worm over WLAN networks, i.e. it distributes itself to as many systems as possible. Emotet is one of the trickiest and therefore most malicious malware threats to existing in recent years.

New trap with Christmas mail

The newly discovered “Christmas campaign” is now trying to lure new unsuspecting people into the trap. Emotet is a malware infection that spreads through spam emails containing compromised Word or Excel documents. These documents use macros to download and install the Trojan on the victim’s computer. Once arrived on a new computer, Emotet then spreads on its own.

Emotet can also have additional malware in its piggyback. Ransomware (encryption) attacks have also been observed.