Cybercriminals have created more sites to trick users into giving up data, downloading malware and sending them money during 2020, taking advantage of the lockdown brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Notably, the UK saw 15 times more scams during this period than in 2019. On these sites, cybercriminals pose as celebrities, shops and government agencies, according to the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).
In particular, the NCSC recorded 700,595 malicious campaigns last year – 15 times more than in 2019 – as it says in a report published today.
Read also: E-commerce: Fraud losses expected to exceed $20 billion in 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in hacking and phishing globally, as fraudsters have taken advantage of more people working from home, which has led to weaknesses in companies' security, as well as fears about the virus, making many users more prone to clicking on links purporting to contain information about the virus.
A popular tactic to scam people during the lockdown has been UK government spoofing, with sites pretending to be authorities or agencies operating in the tax and health sectors to exploit people seeking information amid turmoil such as Brexit and coronavirus emergency measures. US domain host “NameCheap” hosted almost a third of this category, according to the NCSC.
See also: FTC: "Vaccine research" scams target patients
"By mid-year, median download times were consistently above 60 hours. This undoubtedly made NameCheap an attractive proposition for hosting phishing and may explain the increase in monthly hosted campaigns that followed," the NCSC noted about the campaigns.
About 46.4% of the celebrity impersonation scams originated from servers owned by Amazon, a dominant player in the hosting market. They were taken down within an average of 19 hours after requests from the UK cybersecurity agency, giving Amazon one of the fastest response times to this type of scam.
Proposal: COVID-19 and WFH have increased cyberattacks on banks and insurance companies
A scam has faked a Bitcoin trading platform, using the name of British financial expert Martin Lewis, with made-up quotes like "Britons use it to earn an average of £450 a day and stop working!".
Information source: bloomberg.com
