Coronavirus, now is a cyber security threat!!!!

The fear around coronavirus outbreak globally is now a fodder for cyber criminals.

Pune-based QuickHeal Technologies, one of the oldest and largest domestic cyber security firms, found multiple instances of malicious, automated emails reported in several continents with ‘Coronavirus’ as a theme.

"Hackers will try to maximize this opportunity and accelerate the spread of malware through these fake documents. Hacker proximity is predicted to be directly proportional with the regions that ‘Coronavirus’ penetrates. We will see more of such mal-campaigns targeted towards several other demographic regions with emails written in the respective native languages,”QuickHeal said.

Instances of threats are mostly seen in regions closer to the point of origin of coronavirus. Emails were written primarily in Japanese and other Asian languages with the attachment heading in regional language. To make these emails sound ‘very urgent’, attackers ensure they add current dates to these.

British security software company Sophos noted that an email carrying the World Health Organization (WHO) logo is doing the rounds, asking people to go through an attached document on safety measures regarding the spread of coronavirus.

“If you put in your email address or your password and click through, you will be submitting the filled-in web form to the crooks. Worse still, you will be submitting it over an un-encrypted connection. So anyone else on the same network as you, for example in your hotel lobby could potentially capture your network traffic and see the username and password you just put in,” said Paul Ducklin, Principal Research Scientist at Sophos.

Users who click on the link would be taken to a clone of the WHO’s home page, with a pop-up form asking them for an email address and password to gain access. Any personal data entered in the form is captured by miscreants after which the fake site redirects the victim to the genuine WHO site to avert suspicion. The page does not just look like the WHO’s page in the background, it is the WHO’s page.

Ritesh Kumar, chairman and CEO of Cyfirma, a predictive threat analysis firm, noted a jump of a 600% in cyber threats associated with Coronavirus since the first week of February.

Cantonese, Mandarin, Russian and Korean speaking hackers community were found actively discussing coronavirus.

“We have noticed a new malware called CoronaVP. We have seen discussions about spreading fake news in Mandarin, Japanese and English and several fake websites being planned to be launched to sell face mask and other health apparatus using bitcoin in China and USA,” said Kumar.

A few tips to remain safe from cyber attacks:

• Practice precaution when opening emails titled ‘Coronavirus’.
• Be additionally careful when you receive emails in the file formats .PDF,.MP4,.DOC.
• Even if the sender of the email reads like a legitimate source, carefully examine the email ID.
• Look out for educational videos pertaining to coronavirus.
• Don’t fall for emails spreading fake news about the virus.
• Keep away from knowledge sharing emails about the deadly outbreak of the virus.