Illustrative photo – Menu "start" for the Windows 10 operating system from Microsoft.
Prague – Domestic Windows users were most attacked by spyware in January. The most frequently occurring program was Agent Tesla, whose share compared to December increased by five percentage points to 15 percent. Second was Formbook with almost ten percent and third was password theft tool Fareit with two percent. This follows from the statistics of the security firm Eset.
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“In the Czech Republic, we can observe alternating campaigns that are either conducted globally, in English, or that try to adapt locally to local users by using Czech translations, which, however, are usually not correct and can alert users to the fact that something is not right,” said the manager Martin Jirkal of Eset's analysis team.
So-called spyware is most often spread through e-mail spam, with which attackers try to get users to run infected files in attachments.
The Tesla agent spread the most in January in an attachment named PAYMENT SLIP_002_JPEG.exe and was most active on January 12 and 30. Spyware Formbook has been attacking primarily since January 23 and most often appeared in an attachment called RFQ-HKSCAN.exe. Fareit attacked in emails written in Czech. The most common attachments were Order TR04_ B004-V021_Patrem S.R.O.exe, Unicredit_SVX5700736_Electronic payment.exe or Order(P.O_R6790074)_INTERCOM_Bohemia.exe.
“Malicious programs are still evolving and so are attack strategies. We expect attackers can also invest in more reliable language translations in the future. In recent weeks, there has also been a discussion about generating spam with the help of artificial intelligence algorithms, but we can rather count on the fact that in the coming years English will prevail and the text will remain in Czech rather machine translated,” Jirkal added.
According to him, security specialists will mainly monitor the development of these attack strategies in the following period. They do not rule out that the attackers will focus on improving the translations into Czech so that error-free texts are more credible.
