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Top 8 world crises exploited by cybercriminals and lessons learned

Introduction

Crises can vary immensely, be it in terms of the specific nature of each situation or the impacts that may be limited to a specific group — or even an event such as the COVID-19, which is essentially affecting all countries around the world.

Even with this huge variety in types of crises, the fact is that they all share a common point: their ability to bring out both the best and the worst in people. The COVID-19 crisis is no different. While we have countless heroic tales from the front, such as health professionals working long hours daily under the constant risk of contamination, there is no shortage of both scammers and cybercriminals who did not hesitate before starting to exploit the pandemic for their own benefit.

In truth, scammers are experts in exploiting all kinds of situations that attract mass interest, especially those that produce strong emotions in the general public. Unfortunately, this is not something new, and it certainly will not change anytime soon.

One of the best strategies to avoid scams now is to shed some light in our recent past. Let’s try to understand how cybercriminals and other scammers behaved during global crises and what lessons can be learned and applied today.

1. 2009: Swine flu scams 

Our earliest case goes all the way back to June 2009 and involves another pandemic, the swine flu. This influenza pandemic lasted for about 19 months, and the estimated number of cases, including asymptomatic and mild cases, could be 700 million to 1.4 billion people. This is roughly 11 to 21 percent of the global population at the time. 

Soon there were millions of people frightened of catching the H1N1 flu and desperately looking for an easy cure. Scammers took advantage of this public-health emergency (Read more...)

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Infosec Resources authored by Claudio Dodt. Read the original post at: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/infosecResources/~3/Qu4ZmKq842s/