4 lakh corona-related e-attacks in 2 weeks

BENGALURU: In the last two weeks, nearly 4 lakh coronavirus-related cyber attacks have been documented globally, with hackers impersonating WHO, UN, and using MS Teams and Google Meet to lure victims.

Further, in the past three weeks, almost 20,000 (19,749) new coronavirus-related domains were registered globally, including in India, of which 2% (354)are malicious and another 15% are deemed suspicious (2,961), a portion of the analysis done by Check Point Research, a global cyber threat intelligence provider headquartered in Israel, accessed by TOI shows.

The theme of “Corona Cure” has the largest number of domain registrations, compared to other themes: post corona, corona crisis and corona relief payments. “A country-wise break-up and analysis was not done,” said Check Point. “In the past two weeks, our researchers documented 1,92,000 coronavirus-related cyber attacks a week, marking a 30% increase when compared to previous weeks. Researchers cite a key observation: Impersonations,” Check Point says.


Recently, cyber criminals sent emails posing as WHO from the domain “who.int” with the email subject: ‘Urgent letter from WHO: First human Covid-19 vaccine test/result update’, to lure victims into a trap.