Pandemics make for strange bedfellows.
In mid-March, ransomware gangs claimed to be pausing operations against healthcare organizations for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic, following pleas from some security firms and questions from journalists. The group behind the Maze ransomware operation, for example, pledged that "we [will] stop all activity versus all kinds of medical organizations until the stabilization of the situation with the virus."
But the sincerity of such promises is suspect. The Maze Team reportedly was, at the same time they were pledging to stop activity, in the process of extorting money from a UK medical research facility, Hammersmith Medicines Research. The University Hospital of Brno in the Czech Republic reportedly suffered an outage on March 20 due to a cyberattack, possibly ransomware. Other groups have rapidly increased phishing attacks that leverage the subject of the coronavirus, and the COVID-19 disease it causes, as a lure. And outright fraud has increased as well, such as e-mail campaigns collecting "donations" for coronavirus-fighting charities, according security services firm CrowdStrike.
The chaos and fear created by the coronavirus pandemic is just too enticing for cybercriminals to resist, says Adam Meyers, vice president of intelligence at CrowdStrike. "When you have something this widely recognized, and you have people, frankly, freaking out about it, then it becomes an effective ..
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