Christmas Trojan - Hackers Invite to a Party

If you receive a mysterious e-mail inviting you to a Christmas party, you are probably the target of a hacker attack.

Christmas is a good opportunity for hackers to attack and infect a large number of computers. Typically, attempts to hack our system are made via emails with various topics (e.g. voice messages, payment invoices or shipping details). This year Emotet has already attacked during Thanksgiving and Halloween. Email security experts from Cofense Labs have discovered number of spam email with topics like "Christmas party", "Christmas Party next week" or "holiday shedule 2019-2020" or "Our holiday schedules" has increased recently. All these emails contain malware.

Here is an example of how one of the emails looks like.

The messages are accompanied by a Word document called "Party menu.doc" or "Christmas party.doc". When the unsuspecting user opens the file, they will be prompted to enable editing to check its content. After this step, the virus is automatically installed on our computer. From now on, it will be used to send spam and steal all kinds of data.

Under no circumstances should you allow unverified documents to be edited.

As you can see, hackers are not idle and will try to take advantage of every opportunity to access users' computers. Therefore, if you want to have a peaceful holiday, do not be deceived under any circumstances and do not accept invitations to Christmas parties in emails. Unless it's sent by your boss.

• Cofense Labs - official website