The Emotet Trojan, responsible for the theft of personal and banking data from more than 170 countries in 2017, was updated by its developers and is now more dangerous. According to researchers at Kryptos Logic, a company that develops a solution for online security, the malware has been able to extract complete messages from emails sent and received in the last 180 years by machines infected by the trojan.
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Emotet has already caused great financial losses to its victims, causing a waste of about $ 1 million per attack in the United States. DefCon Lab, a company that conducts research on vulnerabilities and cyber threats, reports that the virus has already been detected on Brazilian websites and can infect machines from a Word text file attached to a spam email.
Trojan is able to steal bank credentials and emails from an infected PC â Photo: Pond5
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In its first version, Emotet spread via spam messages. The victim received an email with a malicious text file that, when downloaded, contaminated the computer with malware. Personal data such as bank virtual login and password were automatically stolen by the trojan.
After its evolution, Emotet was also able to collect and extract all the contents of emails sent and received during the last 180 days by the infected machines. With this, the criminals are able to make complete reports of the victims. While the old version of Emotet was limited to stealing browsing data, login and passwords, gaining access to email content allows criminals to now analyze other sensitive data, such as card bills, for example.
In this way, bank accounts are the favorite target of the scammers behind Emotet, as the developed trojan is capable of breaking into them easily. Victims thus suffer financial losses through undue money transfers or through Internet purchases based on data stolen from credit cards.
Emotet has already caused damage in more than 170 countries as a banking trojan â Photo: Pond5
Emotet has arrived in Brazil
According to a survey carried out by DefCon Lab, Emotet was detected on 149 URLs with the domain â.brâ. The new version of the trojan may already be included on these Brazilian sites, so users should take care not to download attachments from unknown or suspicious emails.
When Emotet emerged, more than 170 countries were attacked and the United States had the highest number of victims, with around 40,000 machines infected in total. Security systems stopped the spread of the first version of the trojan. So it is important to keep your PCâs antivirus updated to prevent further mass attacks.
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