On the sidelines of the Covid-19 epidemic, it seems that the Web is plagued by cyber attacks based on fear of the coronavirus. Caution is more important than ever!
Playing on people’s fear
While the toll of the Covid-19 coronavirus epidemic on February 23, 2020 is approaching the 80,000 mark for just under 2,500 deaths, another “infection” this time concerns the Internet. Based in the United States, a cybersecurity company named Proofpoint recently released a rather edifying report. It turns out that hackers are using the fear of the coronavirus epidemic to reinforce their attacks!
Experts point to campaigns promising to unveil a Covid-19 plot. This is information sometimes accompanied by maps revealing the latest foci of infection. Obviously, these data are presented as voluntarily concealed by governments.
It is true that since the beginning of the Covid-19 epidemic, fake news has been very present on the Internet. As a reminder, a man in India went so far as to kill himself after drinking many questionable videos about the epidemic. However, it is a question here of playing on this ground with an aim of inciting the Net surfers to install malware (ex: Trojan horse) present in attachments, and this in order to recover sensitive data.
Programs targeting banking data
Sherrod DeGrippo, manager at Proofpoint, explains that certain programs can record the keystrokes of Internet users before communicating them to hackers. Thus, hackers can have access to passwords and therefore possibly to online bank accounts. These can be Emotet and AZORult malware, but also other programs such as AgentTesla Keylogger and NanoCore RAT. However, the latter particularly target banking data.
In addition, hackers even go so far as to cure their scam by giving an official aspect to the documents. For example, names of well-known companies are used, in addition to the presence of links directing the user to alleged information published by the World Health Organization (WHO).
