Security News > 2020 > February > News Wrap: Valentine’s Day Scams and Emotet’s Wi-Fi Hack

Obviously, these romance scams work obviously, but you know, whenever I see these types of messages in my Twitter inbox or even just on Facebook, because I see them a lot on social media.

It's social engineering at its finest and I you know, never ceases to amaze me actually how good cyber criminals are sort of taking the pulse of what's going on out thereAnd definitely things like Valentine's Day where you know, people are going to be feeling a little vulnerable maybe or, or maybe they're you know, elated because they're in a new relationship or something and they're not paying as much attention as they should be.

Basically, researchers found a new Emotet malware sample that had the ability to spread to insecure Wi Fi networks that were located nearby the device that had been infected and you know, Emotet, it's a malware that's already prevalent since it returned I think back in September 2019.

The researchers who discovered this agreed and that's because if the malware can spread to nearby Wi Fi networks, it can then infect the devices connected to them, and essentially, rapidly escalate Emotet's spread. So I think that's particularly bad because, you know, say someone's device gets infected, hackers could potentially jump to their office network if it's not secured properly, or to other networks that are nearby.

So it can just self propagate through the use of Wi Fi networks and being able to sort of take to the air like is really, you know, it was really interesting, and definitely stood out to me, you know, in terms of malware evolution, I mean, that's very creative and innovative, I think on the part of Emotet's operators.

News URL

https://threatpost.com/news-wrap-valentines-day-scams-and-emotets-wi-fi-hack/152891/