Coronavirus outbreak: Hackers sending fake emails as official notifications from public health centres
By MYBRANDBOOK
The outbreak of coronavirus across the world is being used by hackers as an opportunity to send people fake emails laden with malware. These emails are in the guise of official notifications from public health centers, often with attachments that promise more details on preventive measures against the virus.
Multiple email campaigns have been detected by security firms like Kaspersky who are monitoring for the latest threats. All of these campaigns have used coronavirus as a hook to get unsuspecting victims to open infected messages.
IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence has detected the first major malware campaign where victims were targeted with coronavirus infection reports in various Japanese prefectures including Gifu, Osaka and Tottori.
The emails are “disguised as official notifications from public health centers, and come with attachments that promise to provide more details on preventative measures against coronavirus infections”.
The attachments are disguised as Microsoft Word docs and contain malicious payloads linked to the infamous Emotet malware family. This particular malware can harvest user credentials, browser history and sensitive documents.
These files contained a range of threats, “including Trojans and worms that are capable of destroying, blocking, modifying or copying data, as well as interfering with the operation of computers or computer networks”.
“The coronavirus, which is being widely discussed as a major news story, has already been used as bait by cybercriminals. So far, we have seen only 10 unique files, but as this sort of activity often happens with popular media topics then we expect that this tendency may grow. As people continue to be worried for their health, we may see more and more malware hidden inside fake documents about the coronavirus being spread,” said Anton Ivanov, Kaspersky’s malware analyst.
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