Perhaps this year will see far fewer ransomware attacks than ever before, or perhaps that is too optimistic. Either way, global law enforcement authorities have taken control of "one of the most important botnets of the past decade," called Emotet.

Described as "one of the most professional and long-standing cybercrime services," Emotet began as specialized malware designed to steal banking information. That was in 2014. Since then, according to the European Union law enforcement agency (also known as Europol), it has "evolved into the best solution for cybercriminals."

"Emotet's infrastructure essentially served as a major door opener for computer systems on a global scale. Once this unauthorized access was established, they were sold to other top-level criminal groups, who developed further illicit activities such as data theft and ransomware extortion," Europol stated.

Like many forms of malware, Emotet spread primarily through infected email attachments. These attachments, posing as invoices, shipping notices, and more recently information about Covid-19, attempt to trick unsuspecting recipients into opening them.

"Emotet was more than just malware; what made Emotet so dangerous was that it was loaned out to other cybercriminals to install other types of malware on victims' computers, including banking trojans and ransomware. that were being used to install other types of malware, such as banking Trojans and ransomware," Europol explains.

One of the things that made Emotet so dangerous was that it was polymorphic, meaning that the malware code was constantly changing. This is done to avoid detection by anti-virus programs.

In addition, there were hundreds of servers around the world that made up the Emotet botnet, all of which were equipped with various functions to spread malware. It also proved difficult to bring this botnet down. This led law enforcement authorities around the world to band together and eventually sever its knees from the inside. [The victim's infected machine was redirected to an infrastructure controlled by this law enforcement agency. This is a unique and new approach to effectively disrupt the activities of facilitators of cybercrime," Europol said.

While Emotet is currently benign, technically the botnet still exists.