Jane Edwards
A team of security professionals at Google has identified over 12 government-backed hacking groups that use the COVID-19 pandemic as bait for malware and phishing attempts.
Google said Wednesday one group used COVID-19 messages and U.S. fast food franchises as phishing lures to zero in on U.S. government personnel’s personal accounts.
The company’s threat analysis group found that the World Health Organization, public health agencies and related organizations have become targets of attackers due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Google said its systems have detected over 240M pandemic-related spam messages and 18M COVID-19-linked phishing and malware Gmail messages per day.
The company noted that it uses internal investigative systems, intelligence data and leads from third-party researchers and data sharing with law enforcement authorities and industry partners to help detect and prevent threats.
