The most common ploy a hacker uses to entice you is to write an attractive subject line. If you are a business, chances of you getting lured to mails with subject lines such as ‘Invoice’, ‘Delivery Details’, ‘Shipment Details’ and ‘Payment Details’ are very high. Hackers know this only too well. If you get such mails, you should think twice before clicking on the attachments.

Seqrite, the enterprise brand launched by Internet security solutions company, QuickHeal, says the firm has seen a spurt in the Emotet family of Trojan malware in the country in just one month.

A Trojan misleads users, convincing them to open and download attachments, and then sneaks into the system to steal sensitive information, making them slaves.

“Over the last one month, we have detected 5,000 spam e-mails everyday, carrying Trojans targeting businesses and individuals. From Trojan to Complex Threat Distributor, more than 1.5 lakh incidents related to the Emotet Trojan have been reported in the last one month,” said Sanjay Katkar, Joint Managing Director and Chief Technology Officer of QuickHeal Technologies.

He says the infamous Trojan has evolved into a complex malware that can deliver multiple attack payloads such as Banking Trojans. “Threat actors today are modifying older malware to deliver new-age attack payloads. The recent evolution and outbreak of the Emotet Trojan is the perfect example of how rapidly the global threat landscape has been evolving,” he said.

Once an attachment in the spam mail is downloaded and executed, the malware renames its instance and creates a second self-executable copy of itself, using random combinations from a pre-defined list of words.

How to tackle spam mail

“Don’t open any link in the mail body sent by an unknown source, or download any attachments received from an untrusted source,” he said. One should also have an updated security solution to secure oneself against such sophisticated attacks.

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