Recently, Proofpoint researchers have seen a rising number of phishing emails with attachments or links that contain a new, particularly dangerous version of the Emotet trojan. Emails with Emotet have been distributed on a near-daily basis and in high volume, with as many as 1 million messages sent in a single day. Our latest Attack Spotlight, available now, provides free, timely content you can immediately share with your end users to help them avoid Emotet phishing campaigns.
Emotet was first reported back in 2014, but the malware’s prominence, capabilities, and delivery methods have evolved over the years. It began as traditional banking trojan, designed to steal online banking and payment credentials, with the ability to install additional malicious applications.
The new version of Emotet is especially dangerous and poses a significant threat to any organization. Its capabilities go well beyond earlier banking trojans:
- It can capture every credential on an infected machine, including those stored in a browser.
- It can steal available emails from an infected machine.
This new Emotet variant is delivered via a malicious link or attachment and hard to detect, and it spreads rapidly. To reduce the risk of Emotet taking hold in your organization, it’s essential to arm your end users with the knowledge they need to recognize and avoid this threat. Our latest Attack Spotlight installment makes it easy for infosec professionals to spread the word.
Arm your end users against current phishing threats.
About Attack Spotlight
Introduced in July 2018, each installment in our Attack Spotlight series highlights malicious content and lures that are being distributed at critical mass. We draw from Proofpoint’s world-class threat intelligence — which is based on analysis of billions of emails each day — and apply our security awareness training expertise to deliver actionable content that alerts infosec teams and end users to dangerous attack campaigns.
Each Attack Spotlight includes a two-minute awareness mini-module and a downloadable PDF that feature an example of an actual phishing email seen in the wild, explaining the current threat in non-technical terms. Wombat customers also have another way to use the content: Each lure featured in Attack Spotlight is also added to ThreatSim® as a simulated phishing template.
We release new Attack Spotlights as pressing threats are identified, which means the time between spotting a trending attack and informing end users can be reduced dramatically, from months to days.
We encourage you to take advantage of this free, high-quality content and incorporate it into your security awareness training program. You can access all available Attack Spotlights — including the Emotet content — via our website.
