The Europol-European Criminal Police Organization has announced that it has taken control of the virus network as a result of an international joint investigation into the computer virus "Emotet," which has been rampant around the world.

As a result of a joint investigation with security authorities in eight countries such as the Netherlands, the United States, and Ukraine on the 27th, Europole invaded the information infrastructure of the network that spreads the computer virus "Emotet", suppressed it, and stopped it from the inside. Announced.



"Emotet" is a virus that infects through attachments, etc. Once infected, it not only leaks personal information, but also invites the invasion of other viruses. Damage has been reported in various countries such as Japan, and it is the most dangerous in the world. It is also called a computer virus.



According to the announcement, "Emotet" was spread by a wide range of networks via hundreds of servers all over the world, but this time, by controlling the information infrastructure itself of the network, cyber by "Emotet" Crime is expected to converge.



Ukrainian police who participated in the joint investigation also announced that they had detained two Ukrainians for supporting a group of hackers.



According to the Ukrainian police, the "emotet" has caused damage to financial institutions in Europe and the United States by about 2.5 billion dollars, or more than 260 billion yen in Japanese yen.

Searching for a base for Ukrainian police hackers

Ukrainian police officials searched one of the bases of a group of hackers who are believed to have spread "emotes" in the eastern town of Kharkov on the 26th, and released the video.



In the video, investigators broke the door of the apartment building and entered the room, listening to the situation from the men inside and seizing multiple computers and hard disks.



A large amount of banknotes and gold nuggets were also found, suggesting that the hacker group was getting a lot of money.



Ukrainian police have so far detained two Ukrainians for supporting the hacker group, and have identified members of the hacker group and are continuing their investigation.



According to the Ukrainian police, the total damage caused by "Emotet" to financial institutions in Europe and the United States amounted to 2.5 billion dollars, or more than 260 billion yen in Japanese yen, and it has been up to 12 years for members of the hacker group who participated in the crime. It means that you will be sentenced to imprisonment.

Infection confirmed in over 200 countries worldwide

"Emotet" is a computer virus that started a full-scale epidemic from the beginning, and has been rampant all over the world, with infections confirmed in more than 200 countries so far.



When the terminal is infected by opening the attached file of the sent e-mail, the emotte steals the contact information and the contents of the e-mail, cites the document actually exchanged with acquaintances and business partners in the past, and further falsifies it. Spread the email.



It also has a function to download another virus when infected, which may lead to the theft of credit card information.



According to the major IT company "Cisco Systems" that conducted the survey, "Emotet" became a full-scale epidemic all over the world from the beginning, and in many cases, hundreds of thousands of virus-infecting emails were spread and infected every month. So far, more than 200 countries have been confirmed to have terminals.



The subject line of fake emails was "invoice", which was the most common, but there were also quite a lot of "meeting notices" in Japanese, and Japan was one of the main targets. You can see it.



According to the information security company "Trend Micro", the infection spread most in Japan in September last year, and the number of terminals in Japan that received emails infecting "Emotet" in the month of September was 46,012. Although it was eight times that of the month of the month and has been on a downward trend since then, the damage caused by the infection has continued for some time.



It is expected that the activity of "Emotet" will be converged by this detection, but there is a possibility that a new virus that uses mail with a similarly clever technique will appear in the future, and the Europol-European Criminal Police Organization that was caught emailed We call for special attention when opening the attached file.