Covid cases dominate the main headline again because of the increase in numbers throughout the country as well as the spread of the Omicron variant.
And like the beginning of a pandemic, the hacker re-exploits pandemic to do more attacks.
Because the demand for Covid tests increased over the past few weeks, as well as the number of frauds that exploited the scarcity of tests, warned of Barracuda researchers.
According to a research company, he has witnessed a surge in phishing attacks related to Covid tests over the past few months.
Since the beginning of October 2021, fraud related to tests has increased by 521%.
Scammers are reported to have chosen different tactics to get the attention of their victims.
They send offers on email to sell covid tests and other medical equipment such as masks or gloves.
Some of them sell fake or invalid products.
Fake notifications from unpaid orders from Covid tests are being sent where Scammers have provided PayPal accounts to receive payments to complete the Covid Rapid test purchase, relying on their victims’ despair.
Evil fraudsters have also mimiced health workers and Lab test providers as legitimate employees to share false test results.
When some organizations try to get their staff back to the office, they send updated policies or request information about employee vaccination status.
Hackers hijack this conversation.
In one specific example found in Barracuda’s research, cybercriminal disguised as the HR department and shared files hosted on phishing sites with employees in the hope of stealing their account credentials.
The attackers went as far as imitating the Office 365 logo and stated that the document was scanned for viruses and spam content.
Sharing his insight about such attacks, James Forbes-May, Vice President, APAC on the Barracuda network said, “Covid-19 has disrupted the health and mental sanity everyone for almost 2 years now.
The latest variants have brought other opportunities for scammers to use people -People who are looking for Covid-19 tests.
So, it is very important to remain aware while clicking a suspicious link or opening an attachment in this unexpected email and leaking any personal information when looking for a test, regardless of it becomes a legitimate site.
“