Criminals are using the COVID-19 pandemic to carry out phishing and malware attacks.<\/p>\n
This is according to a joint advisory<\/a><\/strong> from the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.<\/p>\n The agencies observed a rise in the use of COVID-19-related themes in attempts to harvest sensitive user data or to swindle users out of money.<\/p>\n The threat has been amplified by the increase in remote working as more people are confined to their homes due to governmental restrictions on movements.<\/p>\n “At the same time, the surge in home working has increased the use of potentially vulnerable services, such as VPNs, amplifying the threat to individuals and organisations,” the advisory stated.<\/p>\n The attackers exploit general curiosity and concern over the COVID-19 virus to prey on users.<\/p>\n Scammers will often pretend to be trusted entities and use social engineering methods to persuade users to carry out a certain action.<\/p>\n “To create the impression of authenticity, malicious cyber actors may spoof sender information in an email to make it appear to come from a trustworthy source, such as the World Health Organization or an individual with ‘Dr.’ in their title.”<\/p>\n “Other examples purport to be from an organisation\u2019s human resources department and advise the employee to open the attachment,” it added.<\/p>\n This convinces users to click on a link or download an attachment that may compromise their information or the integrity of their systems.<\/p>\n Additionally, the attackers are exploiting COVID-19 to steal user credentials – such as for email services from Google and Microsoft.<\/p>\n “Spoofed pages are designed to look legitimate or accurately impersonate well-known websites. Often the only way to notice malicious intent is through observing the website URL,” the advisory said.<\/p>\n “In some circumstances, malicious cyber actors specifically customise these spoofed login pages for the intended victim,” it warned.<\/p>\n The advisory detailed examples of phishing campaigns carried out via email.<\/p>\n Users should be wary of emails that may have subject lines such as the following:<\/p>\n Malicious file attachments used to deliver malware payloads could be named with coronavirus or COVID-19 themes, with one example the advisory gave being “President discusses budget savings due to coronavirus with Cabinet.rtf”.<\/p>\n Although most of these attacks are carried out via email, the advisory said that SMS was also being used.<\/p>\n “Historically, SMS phishing [Smishing] has often used financial incentives, including government payments and rebates (such as a tax rebate) as part of the lure,” it explained.<\/p>\n “Coronavirus-related phishing continues this financial theme, particularly in light of the economic impact of the epidemic and governments\u2019 employment and financial support packages.”<\/p>\n One example it noted was a series of SMSs using a UK government-themed lure to harvest emails, addresses, names, and banking information.<\/p>\n The SMSs include a link which directs the user to a phishing site, where they may type in their details thinking it would be used by a legitimate entity.<\/p>\n It is advisable to not click on any links or attachments in emails or text messages purporting to provide coronavirus details or relief unless these are from official channels or sources.<\/p>\n Similar trends have been noted in South Africa, as the South African Banking Risk Information Centre (SABRIC) warned<\/strong><\/a> on 17 March 2020.<\/p>\n SABRIC provided the following tips to bank customers on how to avoid becoming a victim:<\/p>\n South Africans have several options when it comes to getting reliable updates on COVID-19, primarily: COVID-19 South African Resource Portal<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Cyber criminals are using the COVID-19 pandemic to carry out phishing and malware attacks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":233877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[63643,1275,35,801,30150,64241],"class_list":["post-348177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-e-mail-phishing","tag-headline","tag-malware","tag-ransomware","tag-sms-phishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348177"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348177"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":349569,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348177\/revisions\/349569"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}How the attacks work<\/h3>\n
What to look for<\/h3>\n
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South Africans at risk<\/h3>\n
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Trusted source of COVID-19 information<\/h3>\n
Now read: Biggest jump in new coronavirus cases in South Africa since the first day of lockdown<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"