Corona virus has impacted the world in an unprecedented manner putting health and safety of several people in great danger during past few months. This has led to several countries announcing a complete or partial lock down whereby billions of people are advised to stay home and work from home. Cybercriminals have exploited this precarious situation and anxious mindset of people to commit social engineering attacks on them and phishing frauds. The Ministry of Home affairs, Govt of India has reported a steep rise as high as 86% in cybercrimes over the past four weeks. The modus operandi of criminals predominantly has been to use trojans, keyloggers, other malware sent through infected links, attachments via mails or social media posts to commit phishing and ransomware attacks.
In past few weeks, registration of domain names using keyword ‘Covid’ has grown exponentially, out of which 50% registered are being operated for fraudulent purposes. This is not limited to fake websites. Cyber criminals are luring potential victims to download infected files through sending suspicious emails and links like ‘Deadly Corona Virus Map’ that is designed to steal a person’s critical information such as usernames, passwords and credit card numbers. As a user tries to navigate through the map to learn the spread of Corona Virus, a malware identified as AZORult is activated which is an information stealer.