The growing cyber threat after coronavirus blues

Although the effects of COVID-19 will continue to wreak havoc on the online population, it is clear just how important cyber-security is, both to individuals and organizations.

By Antony Mutunga

The disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has been massive. Most people took to working from home, which has had a huge impact on economies. The shift resulted in a renewed reliance on technology, compelling people to become more connected, and shift to online practices and transactions. Although the shift of daily life to online places has managed to reduce the spread of the virus, it has also been a blessing for cyber-criminals and hackers, for whom Christmas seems to have come early. 

Unlike some organizations and businesses, most individuals at home do not keep the cyber security defenses for their digital platforms up to date, which increases their exposure to being hacked. With this knowledge, cyber criminals have taken advantage to ramp up cyber-attacks all over the world in relation to the pandemic. 

According to Jared Muki, a tech expert, the pandemic has seen cybercriminals acquire a new angle to exploit the growing number of users online. “Hackers and cybercriminals evolve as time goes on. They evolve with whatever is taking up the spotlight. In our current situation, they have developed at an alarming pace to exploit the fear and uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Muki.

In the six-seven months that COVID has been around, online users have reported an increasing number of fake news related to ways of preventing and curing COVID as well as attacks such as phishing and online scams. A large number of sites came up during the height of the pandemic designed to lure in users with the pretense of having information and statistics on the pandemic. Unbeknown to users, whenever they access these sites, which are mostly embedded with malware and trojans, they end up having their data breached and stolen.   

Ransomware attacks have also been on the increase since the start of the pandemic as cyber-criminals used the hacking tactic mostly targeting large corporations. According to VMware, an American software company, ransomware attacks are up 90% compared to the previous year. The attack, which works when cybercriminals hold onto your information until a ransom is paid, has seen a number of industries to be disrupted, including health, research, tech and public institutions. With these targets being greatly overwhelmed by the virus, access to data and information is crucial.

For instance, Garmin, a GPS and smartwatch company suffered a ransomware attack which was believed to be the work of Russian group ‘Evil Corp’. The group caused the company to remain offline for three days in August as they demanded for a ransom of Sh1.09 billion ($10 million). 

The World Health Organization (WHO) is another organization that has recorded an increase in the number of cyber-attacks. WHO faced phishing emails while its staff grappled with online scams as they worked remotely. According to its research, at least 450 active WHO email addresses and passwords were leaked on online while also, thousands more belonging to others working on the coronavirus response were leaked as well. This did not only delay a response to the pandemic but also continued to hurt the world economy as a whole.

With sim swapping, cyber-criminals have also acquired the caller ids of employees by convincing carriers to assign their numbers to new phones. In doing so, the hackers could act as if they are from the organization to gather data and information from the users.

An example is the Twitter hack that took place in July this year. The hack, which affected several celebrities, business executives, companies, and politicians’ Twitter accounts, including Barrack Obama and Kanye west, saw people get conned as they sent bitcoin worth around $117,000 to an account belonging to the hacker. Simply starting by sim swapping someone’s phone and pretending to be from twitter, the culprit was able to gain access to sensitive information that allowed him to carry out the attack.

Additionally, the pandemic has also caused an increase in online child abuse exploitation. As children were home due to school closures and traveling was restricted, they have been frequent users of the internet. This has seen them being targets of sex offenders who are using social media platforms to exploit them.

The effects of COVID-19 will continue to wreak havoc on the online population, although now it is clear just how important cyber-security is, not only for organizations but for individuals as well. Going forward, the authorities need to also do a better job of detecting and punishing those who are exploiting the pandemic for their own selfish gain. (