BlackEnergy

BlackEnergy is the name of a malware-developers group, responsible for an infamous network-damaging malware attack that in December 2015 was used to cause a large-scale blackout in Ukraine that affected 1.4 million Ukrainians. This group, which has been active since 2007, has enlarged to two known groups, GreyEnergy and TeleBots. The BlackEnergy main targets are industrial networks from crucial organizations such as energy generators and transportation providers. BlackEnergy can be delivered to the targeted computer via corrupted Microsoft Word documents and spear-phishing emails. BlackEnergy is attacking various crucial infrastructure sites in the US since 2011, including real state, water, telecommunications and energy.

The security community works very hard to identify and fight malware threats like BlackEnergy. However, network admins also need to cooperate by preventing these infections from being successful by educating their employees about the danger behind an email attachment that looks innocent completely and other traps created by criminals.