Hackers Are Leveraging the Corona-Virus Pandemic | Free Antivirus Software

Hackers Are Targeting Corona-Virus Pandemic, Block Using Free Antivirus Software

Just as you quickly look at your cell phone in a store on Black Friday, you discover an offer from Amazon that is too good to be true and is only valid for the next two hours.

As the tax return deadline is approaching, you will receive an email from the tax authorities asking you to confirm some information immediately, otherwise, your refund will be delayed.

Or, following the recent catastrophic hurricane, an email from the Red Cross contains an urgent request for donations, allegedly to help those who lack shelter, food or clothing.

These are all examples of event-based email attacks that take advantage of current events such as holidays, sporting events, and natural disasters to create compelling phishing baits. Outstanding or current events have three important characteristics that make an email attack more likely to succeed:

• An inherent sense of urgency: the vacation or sporting event is just around the corner, or the disaster has just happened. One way or another, it creates a sense of urgency that can be exploited to provoke immediate responses.
• Important legitimate email traffic: Various parties (e.g., corporations, government agencies, nonprofits, etc.) are sending important messages related to the event and users are eagerly awaiting those messages.
• Confused users: Due to changing conditions in their real-world or because they experience a lot of emotions (worry, fear, anxiety, stress, etc.), users are confused and more inclined to neglect their vigilance.
• Coronavirus phishing and scams, as in the previous example of event-based email attacks are on the rise.

The latest lure for event-based email attacks is the global coronavirus pandemic - and it contains the features outlined above. Overall, the world feels an incredible sense of urgency as the number of cases skyrockets every day. Schools and most businesses are closed, so workers prepare to work from home while balancing it with their children. These closings and the first signs of an economic downturn are causing wild market volatility and unprecedented action by governments around the world.

All of this has left us tired, distracted, confused, anxious, fearful, and desperate and has left us looking for reliable information. While government agencies, businesses, schools, and other organizations are sending numerous legitimate emails about the coronavirus, hackers are taking advantage of this location to launch a wide variety of email attacks, including spam, fraud, phishing, spear-phishing, and malware. 

Based on our global visibility into email traffic, Protegent was the first to spot the usual flood of spam that COVID-19 is exploiting to peddle items like face masks. The following example is rather harmless, albeit unsolicited. The display name has been changed to Coronavirus Mask, but the message content highlights "Respirators against pollution and for clean air".

We have also seen a wide variety of email scams that are similar to spear-phishing in that they lack links or malicious attachments. In the example below, someone pretending to be an engineer for an offshore oil company offers the recipient an assistant job. Due to the coronavirus, this is a job where work is carried out from home, according to the email message.

Very quickly, however, we began to see more sophisticated phishing campaigns pretending to be the World Health Organization (WHO), the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) and the government agency (GOV.UK). The GOV.UK phishing email on the left claims that the recipient is eligible for a £ 128 tax refund in response to the coronavirus and leads them to a phishing page asking for the funds can access. On the right is a WHO phishing page that asks the user to verify their account information to download COVID-19 security measures.

With the US and other governments around the world approving stimulus plans, we expected additional waves of attack, lured with government support checks and another economic stimulus. Also, given the sharp rise in unemployment figures, we also expect an increase in fake job offers similar to the above example.

Introduction of Event Tracking for Protegent Antivirus for Office 365

While operator solution providers and IT administrators naturally have to deal with all kinds of threats, event-based e-mail attacks pose a particular challenge: How do I protect my end users from the sudden flood of threats while ensuring that legitimate important ones are not accidentally Communication is blocked? During this time of global crisis, we at Protegent felt deeply responsible to contribute in our unique way to effectively managing and containing the pandemic.

With that in mind, we've released a new event tracking feature for Protegent for Office 365. The feature gives operator solution providers and administrators better insight into all - both malicious and legitimate - email traffic primarily linked to the coronavirus pandemic.

In the Email Logs section of the Protegent for Office 365 Admin Console, simply select the COVID-19 filter under Current Events to view email traffic, including all that Protegent has detected Coronavirus-related threats. If the filter missed something, you can use the Remediate function to pull the message from one or more inboxes. Equally important is that you keep an eye on legitimate COVID-19 communications and put them back in users' inboxes in case messages are misclassified.

COVID-19 is the first use case for the Protegent for Office 365 Event Tracking feature. More will be added over time in response to holidays and other one-time events that trigger spikes in threats and overall email traffic. The goal is to increase transparency and help operator solution providers build customer trust in these important times.

Resources to help users identify coronavirus threats and keep telecommunications safe.

In addition to this new feature, we've put together a collection of resources to educate end-users on how to recognize email threats during the coronavirus pandemic and how to work safely from home. The page contains infographics about digital hygiene and information on how to identify phishing and spear phishing attacks, but also links to free tools such as our free antivirus software.