COVID-19 Cybercrime Capitalizing on Brazil’s Government Assistance Program

COVID-19 Cybercrime Capitalizing on Brazil’s Government Assistance Program

IBM X-Force Incident Response and Intelligence Services (IRIS) has been tracking cybercrime capitalizing on the coronavirus pandemic since January, and has observed the geographical areas of this activity shift over time. In February, cybercriminals were focusing on Asia, and we observed threat actors targeting potential victims in Japan with coronavirus-related phishing lures. In mid-March and into April, as the virus spread dramatically into Spain, the United States and Iran, COVID-19-related attacks in these geographies also increased.


More recently, the virus has been spreading in Latin America, leading experts at the World Health Organization (WHO) and elsewhere to declare that “South America has become a new epicenter for the disease.”


We examine how cybercriminals are capitalizing on COVID-19 in Brazil — the most populous country in South America and second in the world for the number of coronavirus infections as of early June — by delivering malicious email, SMS text and WhatsApp messages and creating hundreds of malicious sites since March 2020. In particular, our analysts found that over 693 new COVID-19-related Brazilian cybercriminal malicious websites have been created this year, many capitalizing on the country’s government assistance program related to the pandemic.


Government Assistance and Cybercriminal Intervention


Similar to other areas of the world, the coronavirus pandemic has led the Brazilian government to
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