Cyber crime Soars in First 100 Days of Coronavirus

Cyber criminals are capitalising on the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, with over 83 million COVID-19 related e-mails blocked and thousands of malicious URLs found in just the first 100 days of the pandemic.

This is according to Mimecast, whose 100 Days of Coronavirus threat intelligence report indicates that threats are evolving as the pandemic evolves.

More than 1 000 COVID-19 themed impersonation e-mails were blocked by Mimecast alone, including a single significant campaign of over 500 e-mails delivered in XLS format on 6 April 2020 to the North America and Caribbean region. These contained the Stratos malware dropper, an MS Office macro-based Trojan.

Mimecast’s Threat Intelligence Centre has seen a steady stream of different e-mail phishing attacks that change in line with public concerns.

“New e-mail phishing scams are matching what people are talking about and what people are worried about at the time,” says Brian Pinnock, director of Sales Engineering at Mimecast.

“The first phishing attacks impersonated doctors and other specialists from Wuhan, China, enticing users to click on a link to find the latest information on symptoms and treatments. Then, as governments and other official organisations became involved, we saw impersonations of those organisations offering government advice. When businesses began taking action and started sending people home, we saw business impersonations being sent to employees.