The number of malicious Covid-19 related domains that have cropped up since the pandemic started continues to rise. There has been a dramatic spike since the announcement of the vaccine. A lot of people are anxious to get it, that criminals are taking advantage of this need.
This news comes from a new report that was published by experts from the cybersecurity firm Webroot. The firm states that more than 4,500 new domains with suspicious content or behavior popped up in the months after the vaccine was announced.
Many people are anxious to start going out, and vaccines are one way to achieve that, making it easy to scam those who are too eager.
A huge spike
The domains that popped up contained all the time-relevant keywords like ‘cure Covid,’ ‘Corona,’ ‘vaccine,’ and ‘Covid-19.’
934 domains were specifically found to include the word ‘vaccine’ in their titles. The report also found out that some of the other ones contained misspelled variants of the same keywords. Site owners do this so their site addresses can be easily remembered.
Almost 2,300 domains had ‘Covid’ in the titles, and just over 600 others had the word ‘testing’ or ‘test’ in their titles too.
Beware of websites bearing gifts
In the period between December 8 and January 6, Webroot reported that the use of the word ‘vaccine’ in questionable domains had increased by 336%, compared to March last year, when they rose by 94.8%.
In recent times, cybercriminals have been cashing in on fears and taking advantage of gaps exposed by the pandemic. The security gaps especially are apparent now more than ever.
One of the criminals’ tactics is building fake websites that prompt people who visit to sign up for vaccines. Instead, they get infected by malware and have their data stolen.
53 minutes ago
