CORONAVIRUS SCAM ALERT
As if things werent bad enough – scammers are making the most of the Global frenzy for information concerning the Coronavirus outbreak by setting up fake websites. There has been a surge in the registration of COVID-19 related domains in Jan and Feb 2020 with some 5% of domains being used for malicious activities – according to the latest Checkpoint Security blog. There have been over 4000 coronavirus domain registered globally in January with some of these domain likely to be used for phishing attempts by scammers. An example by Checkpoint shows a phishing scam aimed at Italian email addresses with the translation below :-
“Due to the number of cases of coronavirus infection that have been documented in your area, the World Health Organization has prepared a document that includes all the necessary precautions against coronavirus infection.
We strongly recommend that you read the document attached to this message.
With best regards,
Dr. Penelope Marchetti (World Health Organization – Italy”
The email contains an attachment with an infected document with malicious code and research on Dr Penelope could not find any doctor by that name associated with the WHO.
Recommendations
- Be careful when dealing with emails from unknown senders
- Never click on unknown attachments or attachments as they may be loaded with malicious code
- Look out for the tell tale giveaways of a phishing attempts with spurious senders, bad grammer and sense of urgency
- Always make sure you have the latest security software and patches applied to your devices.
