Cybercriminals have exploited the increased digital work done at home by people in lockdown to steal information, resulting in a 30 percent increase in coronavirus-related cyberattacks in the past three weeks, according to researchers at Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point Software Technologies, The Times of Israel reported on Tuesday.
The pandemic has, in particular, dramatically bolstered the use of fake websites and phishing emails, which are fraudulent efforts to obtain sensitive information by hackers pretending to be trustworthy representatives of well-known organizations, such as the United Nations or the World Health Organization.
This upsurge in cyberattacks means there are now some 192,000 such attacks weekly around the world, according to the research.
Cybercriminals have particularly been leveraging the Zoom brand name to get the attention of users, with some 2,500 new Zoom-related domains registered in the past three weeks. All of these domains are fake and apparently used by the criminals for their phishing activity.
The research comes on the heels of Google’s report last month that it saw more than 18 million daily malware and phishing emails related to COVID-19 scams in just one week, on top of the 240 million daily spam messages it sees related to the coronavirus, according to The Verge.
The Times of Israel reported that both Interpol and Europol also have been warning of large increases in coronavirus-related fraud.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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