Security News > 2020 > October > CISA Warns of Emotet Trojan Targeting State, Local Governments
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warns of an increase in attacks targeting state and local governments with the Emotet Trojan.
Active for over a decade, Emotet is a Trojan mainly used to drop additional malware onto compromised systems.
In an alert published this week, CISA and the Multi-State Information Sharing & Analysis Center explain that, since August, cyber-criminals have been increasingly targeting state and local governments with phishing emails meant to drop Emotet.
Emotet operators also switched to using password-protected archives as attachments, to bypass email security gateways and security researchers noticed that hackers leveraged thread hijacking for the delivery of Emotet.
In their alert, CISA and MS-ISAC also provide a list of ATT&CK techniques that Emotet employs, along with Snort signatures to help with detection, and recommendations to network defenders on how to improve security posture.