
COVID-19 Scam Roundup – May 4, 2020
Malicious actors continue to abuse coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) as a lure to profit off of innocent people. Indeed, Arkose Labs found that 26.5% of all transactions recorded in Q1 2020 were fraud and abuse attempts—a 20% increase over the previous quarter and the highest attack rate ever observed by the security firm’s researchers. It’s therefore unsurprising that we’ve seen the U.S. Department of Homeland Security launch “Operation Stolen Promise” and other initiatives in an attempt to combat these growing numbers of fraud attempts.
While law enforcement officials work to take down these fraudsters, you as a user can leverage your awareness of the latest COVID-19 scams to not only protect yourself and but to also safeguard others by reporting new ploys to the authorities. Here are some of the latest ruses for which you should be watchful.
No, Washing Your Driveway WON’T Protect You Against COVID-19
As reported by NorthWalesLive, the North Wales Police (NWP) Flintshire learned that fraudsters had been going around to elderly residents and asking if them if they would like to pay to have their driveways cleaned. Their hook? They claimed that a clean driveway could protect them against COVID-19.
Yeah…no. NWP Flintshire said it this way:
We have had numerous reports today of elderly and vulnerable people being pressured to have their driveways washed and disinfected. They’re claiming that it protects against the COVID-19 virus. To be clear, this is nonsense.
As of this writing, local authorities had stopped several suspects while on patrol, but they were still in search of a suspicious white Transit tipper.
Anubis Trojan Disguised as Coronavirus Tracking Map
In a video posted on YouTube, ESET security researcher Lukas Stefanko shared that an attack campaign targeting Italian users. The operation began with a malicious website that (Read more...)
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from The State of Security authored by David Bisson. Read the original post at: https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/security-awareness/covid-19-scam-roundup-may-4-2020/