With new
technological innovations all over the place, when I heard for the first time
about corona I thought it was a system virus. Somewhere, I correlated corona
with computers. My interest to know about the coronavirus increased when I saw
in the news that it’s a disease born in China. Now I’m afraid of the letter ‘C’
as it denotes ‘Corona’, ‘China’ and so on.
I went back to
the history behind this virus and something interesting came out of it. This
virus is similar to SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) born in China in
2003. SARS-COV-1 was a virus from the animal kingdom, generally bats, that
spread to other animals and impacted humans as well. Corona-2019 is quite
similar to SARS-2003.
How it is
going to impact companies or individuals and why we must all be extra vigilant
and careful in this situation.
Someone’s fear
becomes an opportunity for someone else. But who? Any views?
it’s cyber
criminals!
It’s very
obvious that in the environment of fear about corona which came up suddenly in
December, 2019, people will be eager to know about the cure for corona disease,
the medicines, treatments and so on.
Suddenly,
millions of people started searching cures for the disease and these searches
gave an opportunity to cyber criminals to earn money out of this fear. Cyber
criminals are always a step ahead of the general public. And coronavirus is an
excellent opportunity for them to launch their nefarious activities while the
world is busy searching for a cure for the disease.
How will the
cyber criminals achieve their objectives?
Through phishing
and malware.
Phishing is a cyber crime in which a target or targets are contacted by
email, telephone or text message by someone posing as a legitimate institution
to lure individuals into providing sensitive data such as personally
identifiable information, banking and credit card details and passwords.
Through emails, hackers send malicious emails containing malicious URL’s. Once
a person clicks the URL, his personal information gets shared with the hackers.
Another way to
send malicious messages is by inserting an exciting link on the websites that
people are searching. Once someone has searched for ‘Cure for coronavirus
disease’, a malicious window gets opened; and if the person clicks that window
he will lose his personal information, in fact, he might even lose his entire
computer database.
Why we must
be extra vigilant and ‘C’: Careful while searching about coronavirus.
Hackers are
writing city-specific malware to trap curious citizens. As governments across
the world are trying to minimise the risk of coronavirus, steps are being taken
to limit gatherings of people by cancelling public events, closing malls,
halls, schools, etc. Hackers have been using city-specific messages which
contain information about these government orders and asking users to click on
a link which takes them to an outside page.
In this example,
an email intimating the closure of schools, colleges and cinema halls in Mumbai
is used to lure the user and draw him into clicking on a suspicious link. Once
you click on any one of the outside links, it will prompt the system to open a
new outside web-page which might contain harmful malware.
How to be
safe in such a situation.
1. Don’t click on Links: Avoid the habit of
clicking on links shared via social media, instant messaging applications, or
any other source;
2.
Don’t open unfamiliar emails: Do not open
emails if you don’t trust the sender. Don’t click on links in emails with
coronavirus in the subject line under any circumstances;
3. Reporting fake emails: Report such mails to your email service
provider or to your organisational security team;
4.
Updates on government websites: Rely only on
known sources for healthcare updates (these include the official websites and
social media channels of government health departments, union or state
governments, news publications of repute and your local healthcare
professionals);
5.
Important thought: In today’s environment,
if someone cares for you and wants to reach out to you with some emergency
communication, they will call you or text you.
They will not
share any URLs;
6. Updating of software: Do update all your software,
Operating Systems and mobile applications. Don’t skip updates;
7.
HTTPS: Check the URL of websites very
vigilantly every time. A single typo could lead you to an infected website.
Refer only https websites and not ‘http’ websites.
These are a few suggestions which we must implement in our day-to-day
life as well.
BE AWARE! BE ATTENTIVE!! AND BE SAFE!!!
