The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic it has brought the world to its knees: the imposition of necessary measures of social distancing has caused an inevitable slowdown in economic and commercial activities in all countries, with repercussions which are still difficult to understand in terms of perspective.
Even in these moments there is someone who does not stop. And we are not talking about those who are in the front line to try to fight this pandemic, but unfortunately cybercriminals who in a situation like this find more fertile ground than usual to continue perpetrating their wrongdoings. It is therefore not just the problem of scams, which we have already talked about several times and for which the European Commission has already requested a more active role from the web giants, but precisely of cyber crimes carried out through malware campaigns or phishing techniques.
Check Point's analysis helps to frame the situation: since mid-February it has been recorded a surge in the number of cases that go from a few hundred a day to over 5000 in the single day of March 28th, to settle on a daily average of 2600 attacks.
It is good to specify that Check Point, in this specific analysis, classifies as a "coronavirus related attack" any website containing the terms "crown" or "covid" in the domain, files whose name contains "crown" and files distributed via email whose subject contains terms related to the coronavirus.
A few more numbers: 84% of the recorded events were triggered by phishing websites and about 2% of these events touched users who accessed a malicious website using a mobile device. Over the past two weeks, more than 30,000 domains related to coronavirus have been registered, 131 of which are actually dangerous and 2777 currently as doubtful and under investigation. Since January 2020, over 51,000 domains have been registered containing terms related to the coronavirus or the COVID-19 pandemic.
Check Point then highlights a mode currently preferred by hackers to capitalize on the situation, and that is to exploit the success of those products and services that make staying at home a little more bearable. Netflix a striking example, to which many people turn to try to fight boredom. This is exploited by hackers by building phishing websites, which are intended to obviously collect fraudulent victims' credit card numbers using domains that mimic the official ones, such as, for example, quote Check Point, netflixcovid19s.com.
How to stay safe? There is nothing particularly different than the usual common sense rules: carefully check the address of the websites and links on which you click (looking for typo or anything that may be just out of place), take caution in opening of emails especially if with attachments, and be sure to purchase goods or services from reliable, reliable and safe sources: do not click on links in the emails but go directly to whoever you want by typing the site address in the browser bar.
