Nine out of 10 COVID-19 domains are scams. Half a million Zoom accounts are being sold on the Dark Web. Brute-force attacks are up 400%. And a lot more has happened in cyberspace since the coronavirus pandemic began.
Below you will see some statistics regarding COVID-19 and the world of cybersecurity:
1. The number of unsecured remote machines increased by 40%
As you would expect with so many new remote workers, there has been a huge increase in the number of remote desktop connections. According to Channel Futures citing a study by Webroot, there has been a 40% increase in machines using RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol).
2. RDP brute-force attacks increased by 400% in March and April
According to ZDNet's Catalin Cimpanu, cybersecurity firm Kaspersky released a report in April showing a huge jump in RDP (remote desktop protocol) attacks.
All these new remote desktop connections create a rich environment for targets. But here's the thing: What happens when you rush to get a ton of services up and running overnight? Mistakes happen. That's one reason why so many remote desktops are insecure.
3. COVID-19-related email scams increased by 557% in March alone
According to Barracuda Networks, the number of COVID-19-related phishing scams skyrocketed in March. The increase likely continued into April, but we only have March data available at this time.
These scams work like regular phishing scams, trying to trick users into giving up credentials . The only difference is that the emails are using the pandemic to trick users by targeting various psychological factors.
4. Users are currently three times more likely to click on a phishing scam link
Even before the pandemic, credential theft and phishing were at the heart of 67% of breaches.
In a study conducted in late March, Verizon researchers found that users are three times more likely to click on a phishing linkandthen enter their credentials now than they were before COVID-19. Of course, we can’t ignore the fact that phishing messages often use the words “COVID” or “coronavirus,” “mask,” “test,” “quarantine,” and “vaccine.”
5. Billions of pages exist on the internet about COVID-19
About three weeks ago, we did a Google search for the phrase “COVID-19” and got 6.1 million results. Today, the same search returned 4.8 billion results. It’s clearly the top search topic.
6.Tens of thousands of COVID-19-related domains are being created daily
ZDNet has been tracking the rise of coronavirus-themed domains and found that tens of thousands of new unique coronavirus-themed domains are being created every day.
7. 90% of new COVID-19-related pages are scams
How many of these sites are legitimate? According to the same ZDNet survey, “nine out of ten are scam websites that take you to fake cure sites or private websites, which are likely used to distribute malware.”
8. More than 530,000 Zoom accounts are being sold on the Dark Web
Just as remote work has increased, there has been an unprecedented increase in video meetings held via Zoom. The website Bleeping Computer reports that it found over half a million Zoom credentials for sale on the dark web.
