The global COVID-19 pandemic is not only a serious threat to us, but also a serious challenge to our cybersecurity. Payment fraud exploiting the pandemic is spreading around the world more and more often. Fear and mental instability, which often turns into panic, opened a new window of opportunity for fraudsters. The virus and the horrifying news have created the perfect basis for all sorts of fraudulent attacks.
Although these fraudulent schemes are not new (they are all old and well-known and only adapted to the latest crown news), but the growing anxiety and fears, increased demand for personal protective equipment and pharmaceuticals, law enforcement in the process of maintaining public order, increasing the time spent by citizens on the Internet – all these factors, acting together, undermine the overall anti-fraud immunity and critical thinking of citizens.
Extortion
It is an online extortion where fraudsters make a mass e-mail, convincing recipients that the attackers have a video of how they visited pornographic sites. For the record not to get anywhere, you need to pay a ransom in bitcoins. In fact, as usual, there is no hacking or recording. Scammers use people’s weaknesses and fears to extort money from them. This type of fraud has become more popular in pandemic times.
But with the advent of the coronavirus, fraudsters changed the threat and “strengthened” the evidence base. They are now threatening to infect the victim’s family with coronavirus if they refuse to pay the ransom. For you to believe that the scammer really knows your “little dirty secret”, knows where you live and your relatives live, so he can carry out his threat, the text of the letter indicates the victim’s password from one of his accounts obtained from public login and password databases.
Charity
At the beginning of the year, fraudsters used the theme of charity to motivate people to buy a vaccine for children in China. This method of fraud is financially attractive to criminals on a global scale. With the introduction of quarantine in the world, fraudsters have adapted a well-established scheme of fraud in the field of charity to the theme of coronavirus and began to create fake charities and foundations to combat coronavirus.
Phishing
It is an e-mail from fraudsters who use tricks to identify personal, financial, or security-related data. How it looks like:
You get an incoming letter:
- similar to real e-mails from the bank: with a logo, the usual design and style;
- call-to-action phrase, for example: “Lack of immediate response threatens a fine!”;
- the letter asks to download the application or follow the link.
Cybercriminals rely on people’s feelings: at first glance, fake letters look like real ones, so be very careful.
