Quote:A dramatic uptick in Emotet phishing attacks since July has led the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to issue a warning that state and local governments need to fortify their systems against the trojan.
 
“This increase has rendered Emotet one of the most prevalent ongoing threats,” the CISA alert, issued Tuesday, read.
 
The alarm comes at a time when municipalities are already strained, juggling the concurrent crises of the COVID-19 pandemic, widespread social unrest and a caustic election season. Emotet, which can load other malware and self-propagate, is the last thing they need.
 
“Emotet is one of the reasons why you should never click on links in emails you don’t recognize,” Bryan Becker, product manager at WhiteHat Security, told Threatpost. “Among other things, Emotet turns your computer into a ‘bot’ or ‘zombie’ that can be controlled by the hacker group to perform other crimes — without your OS or anti-malware noticing – one of which is sending more spam emails infecting more people with Emotet.”
 
Since July, CISA’s executive branch security protection tool, the EINSTEIN Intrusion Detection System, has found more than 16,000 instances of Emotet activity. These attacks are being executed in phases, indicating “possible targeted campaigns,” according to CISA, using tainted .doc Word files to deliver the malware.