Emotet Polymorphic Plague Essay

Emotet: The Polymorphic Plague Computer viruses are known to be the bane of the average computer user, but just how devastating can a virus get? In the United States city of Allentown, a destructive virus known as Emotet has infected the major computer systems that run the city’s banks, police, and other security functions around the city (Sheehan, 2018). Without these major systems functioning, all reports, transactions, and documentations must be filed on paper until systems are fully restored. The severity of Emotet is found mostly within the virus’s programming, as this code is always changing. Emotet is a well-known polymorphic trojan virus and, according to the New Jersey Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Cell, it is known to target banking transactions in German and Australian areas but has recently been spotted attacking areas around the United States (NJCCIC, 2017). As a student in cybersecurity, Sheehan’s article on the attack in Allentown proves just how detrimental the security of computer systems is, and what the consequences are for allowing a breach to happen.

One suspected cause of this virus attack is implied through the article’s coverage of phishing attacks which were the causes of other recent major cyber issues (Sheehan, 2018). When analyzing the type and nature of the virus, this is a reasonable assumption as most cases of Emotet infections stem from emails pretending to include invoices or other documents that are infected with malicious code resulting in Emotet’s download (NJCCIC, 2017). Prevention of this type of attack could simply come down to a matter of educating employees about the threat of insecure or unsafe emails that may disguise themselves as urgent and important