In Europe it is defined as: one of the main criminal structures Y lives on many computers Offices throughout Spain. According to experts from the cybercrime fields of the Ministry of Interior, Emotet worm infects 130,000 computers in this country and without the figure showing signs of decline.
Emotet is one of the main threats to cybersecurity in Spain between last July and September and according to Interior data. third most cyberattacked Europe’s. This malware is actually “in a re-campaign for several months,” confirms computer engineer Josep Albors, a cyber-threat specialist and research director at Eset Spain, a firm where they also identified the worm’s recovered activity.
These “campaigns” consist of: bulk email -with an Office document or an attached link- to other computers, catch them and ‘fish’ the data including. The computer worm is active again, despite police beatings, the last of which was days before the NATO summit in Madrid.
A previous international police action in January 2021 led Europol to mention Emotet in the past tense. “It has been one of the most professional and long-lasting cybercrime tools in existence,” said an official memo released by the agency. But the hardest hit, the software showed its strength eight months later. ability to reconfigure itself to avoid tracking; reborn.
For bank accounts
Emotet was born in 2014 in what experts call a “bank worm” and with the aim of accessing financial companies’ servers via colonized computers. infiltrating and stealing capital traffic between current accounts.
This utility is protected, but this malware has been showing other value to criminals for years. Among others, hiring colonized computers to organize, as computer scientists popularly call “zombie mode.” mass mailings, even without the knowledge of the PC user. Also to mobilize ‘zombie’ computers and launch massive attacks o systems to get a DOS (denial of service) hijacking. The attacker will release him… after the ransom is paid.
Police experts in Spain, who measure the number of infected computers at 130,000, do not rule out that the colony will have many more members by the end of the year. And its potential was perfected. “You can use the email list on the infected computer, but you can also send mass emails without being tied to the list on that computer,” explains Albors, who designed the Emotet detection and blocking systems.
Spain, preferred destination
Malicious programs like Emotet are particularly successful in Spain because “here emails from many companies are still blindly trusted”says Josep Albors.
Crime Balance Sheet of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the third quarter of the year, published recently, 89.3% increase in crimes committed in cyberspace -Compared to 2019 and without data from Ertzaintza and Mossos yet included-, that amounts to 217,571 crimes between last July and September.
87.9% (191,160) of these computer crimes are fraud. In the last twelve months, the number of computer scams counted by Interior is 254,934. In 2016, 45,894 people were counted. The growth recorded by Interior is very remarkable: 455.5 percent increase in six years.
Cybercriminals aren’t just looking for money in online bank accounts; also data. those who can stealing from organizations like Tax AdministrationSEPES, Repsol, Iberdrola, Orange, municipalities One police source consulted explains that state capitals are IBEX firms “or any company with personal and bank affiliations.”
missing hands
The number of crimes is increasing much faster than the number of public safety agents to stop them. At the final Home Affairs Committee convened in Congress this Monday, People’s Deputy Ana Vázquez, Lack of staff leads to the creation of “ghost units” cybercrime persecution when the police action is not carried out from Madrid or Barcelona, at the Police, Civil Guard or Mossos headquarters.
Refers to the teams of the Security Forces. lack of real experts in the field. And to illustrate this, he gave an example from his native Galicia: “For all of Urense, it’s being built in the O Carballiño barracks, with the civil guards removed from the other services.”
The precarity of personnel is one of the weaknesses of Spanish and European in the face of the proliferation of cybercriminals. “If someone is a computer science and telecommunications engineer don’t go to the private company and want to come to the civil service and work twice as much for three times less payexplain to me ”, an important person in charge of State Security complains.
The lack of engineers and other specialists, prevalent not only in the Civil Guard and various police forces, but also in the CNI and Armed Forces, is not only present to attract talent: it is also present when it comes to retaining it. “Police officers with years of experience and great technical competence are presented with great technological possibilities. much higher salaries and additional benefits private health insurance, children’s education, company car, remote working and flexible working hours… all these are unthinkable in the State Security Forces”.
A basic scale police officer specializing in cybercrime earns 2,000 euros per month. A firm the size and capacity of Fujitsu or Thales that wants to take it over will offer you 6,000 per monthin addition to the added attractions.