Around 600 Computers of Anne Arundel County Public Library have been Exposed to Emotet Virus

Around 600 computers of Anne Arundel County Public Library have been exposed to the computer virus, Emotet, thus prompting the officials to take those machines out of service. The officials further ask the customers to check their personal information for any kind of fraudulent activity.

It was announced on Saturday (i.e. October 6, 2018) that the library computers have been exposed to Emotet virus, which targets the users through the sophisticated email ruses. Approximately 600 computers total the entire library's computers, including both staff's as well as public, though the officials still don't know exactly how many computers were infected, out of the total computers, during the exposure.

After September 17, 2018, the 4768 users, who logged in with their library card, for using the public computers were notified about the incident. Once the presence of virus was confirmed, the computers were taken out of service.

The library customer information inside the organization's database, however, has not been breached. But any user who used the computer of Anne Arundel County Public Library branch, during that time when the virus affected the computer systems, for accessing their bank accounts; or for purchasing goods and services by using the credit card; or for entering social security number in a website should monitor their accounts for any kind of fraudulent activity and should also change their passwords as a precautionary measure. The customers who used library's Wi-Fi network have not been impacted.

As per the statement of Hampton "Skip" Auld, Library CEO, "we deeply regret that this incident occurred. The protection of our customer's personal information is our top priority. We are conducting a thorough investigation to learn how this happened and to prevent it from happening in the future".

As per the news release detailing virus attack, the virus got discovered in the latter part of September, after the staffs started receiving more spam messages on the Library's email account. Soon after, in the month of October, a few staff's computers started rebooting all of a sudden, and slowly and gradually, the problem spread on to the public computers. Though, initially, the problem was thought to be a software update issues, but later on October 4, 2018, the virus attack was confirmed by the officials, and the computers were taken out of service.

The library now has updated their "virus scanner system", and is also teaching their staff how to identify the digital threats.

» SPAMfighter News - 10/18/2018