Cyber-Criminals Change Tactics to Exploit #COVID19

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a significant shift in tactics employed by cyber-criminals, according to Bitdefender’s Mid-Year Threat Landscape Report 2020, published today.

Threat actors have heavily focused on the issues related to the pandemic to launch attacks such as phishing, ransomware and malware as well as exploit the increased reliance on home networks and IoT devices in the lockdown period, the study found.

Bitdefender also revealed it had received a five-fold increase in the number of coronavirus-themed reports in the first two weeks of March alone, while an average of 60% of all received emails were fraudulent in April and June. Overall, an average of four out of 10 COVID-themed emails were tagged as spam throughout the first of half of 2020. These frequently impersonated government, health and financial institutions to spread misinformation, fake cures and offers for protective equipment.

As the shift to home working took place due to COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, cyber-criminals adapted their strategy to target this phenomenon. This included the discovery of a new DNS hijacking attack targeting a popular brand of home routers that redirected victims to malware-serving websites promising applications that offer new and up-to-date information about the outbreak.

In addition, malware developers also quickly sought to target applications commonly used by remote employees, such as the Zoom video conferencing platform.

Suspicious incident reports related to IoT devices went up by 46% in the six months from January to June, which is linked to people staying indoors much more during the lockdown period. Over half (55.73%) of IoT network threats involved port-scanning attacks.

Ransomware was another partic ..

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