TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The number of attacks using Emotet malware targeting government departments showed a significant increase in June, reports said Saturday (July 16).

Emotet is a Trojan Horse program spreading through spam e-mails with the aim of stealing sensitive data. The program, believed to have originated in Ukraine, was first spotted in 2014, and was taken down by law enforcement in 2021, but it has since reappeared.

Investigators spotted 72,185 suspicious incidents in June likely to threaten government websites and e-mail accounts, CNA reported. In the end, 48% of the incidents turned out to be of a threatening nature.

Emotet played a key role in the rising threat by taking over hacked computers and sending out malicious e-mails to account holders at other government departments. Using the names of civil servants, the e-mails would plant attachments with malware programs in even more government department computers, expanding the Emotet network, the report said.

The use of external hard drives played a significant part in the expansion of the malware, so civil servants should restrict the scope of their usage, government experts recommended.

Government departments have been divided into categories from "A" to "E" according to their security implications, with the A level reserved for the most sensitive institutions, including those handling national secrets, and public hospitals. All bodies in the A and B groups had to complete a reporting system for cybersecurity weaknesses by Aug. 23, the government said.