Very recently, the Coronavirus that apparently originated from the Wuhan province in China has created pandemonium across the world creating an atmosphere of a health crisis for the global populace. As the news of the deadly Coronavirus creates waves of panic across the globe, cyberattackers are lurking into this phenomenon as an opportunity, less of a catastrophe. Multiple instances of malicious, automated emails have been reported in several continents that are getting spooled with ‘Coronavirus’ as a theme.
The content of these emails is smartly written, consisting of an attachment that claims to provide information on prevention & precaution of the virus. When recipients click on this attachment to view the content, what happens next is an irony within itself —one virus used to propagate another. What’s worse is attackers are distributing the infamous Emotet Trojan through these malicious attachments.
Currently, the major reported instances are seen in regions closer to the Coronavirus’ point of origination. Hence, emails written primarily in Japanese and other Asian languages are seen circulated with the attachment heading composed in the regional language, on purpose. To make these emails sound ‘very urgent,’ attackers are ensuring that they add current dates to these emails.
To give a sense of the situation, emails are being sent from fake email IDs of local health organizations that pretend to alarm about the virus’ outbreak in that region.
For example, emails can be sent from fake email IDs of health institutions in the Philippines, the content of which will be on the lines of, “ the Coronavirus has impacted Manila with the first official patient diagnosed in the Philippine General Hospital.” Hackers are even forging the official mailing addresses, phone & fax numbers of these institutions to make the communication sound ..
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