Just how much of an effect has the Corona Virus had on cybercriminal activity?
Bolster (a deep learning-powered fraud prevention company) released its Q1 2020 state of Phishing and online fraud report: COVID edition. The company utilizes its AI engine that gleans over and analyzed over 1 billion websites to provide an in-depth audit of how phishing attacks and online fraud is affecting companies and consumers. Some of the big items to take away from that report:
In Quarter 1 with the introduction of COVID on the global workplace, they observed an exponential increase in phishing and website scams detecting 854,441 phishing and counterfeit pages, with over 4 million being defined as suspicious.
The observed increase in Quarter 1 for phishing and counterfeit pages was over 30%
COVID medical scams have played on cures, with Bolster finding in March alone over 145,000 domain registrations with “stimulus check” in them.
The number of websites that were claiming to offer loans to small business jumped 130% from February to March. With over 60,000 banking websites that were attempting to siphon off stimulus funds.
Cybercriminals targeting remote workers using collaboration and communication sites observed a 50% increase from January to March, as a large majority of the workforce began working from home.
Phishing streaming sites saw an 85% increase from January to March, with over 209 websites being created per day – looking to exploit those who are looking for entertainment while in quarantine.
Link to report: