Announcements

FROM: University Technology Services RE: Beware! Cybercriminals are targeting organizations with COVID-19-related scams and phishing emails.
Sent:
4/8/2020 10:14:34 AM
To: Students, Faculty, Staff

 

Cybercriminals are targeting organizations with COVID-19-related scams and phishing emails.

These cyber threat actors will often masquerade as trusted entities. Their activity includes using coronavirus-themed phishing messages or malicious applications, often masquerading as trusted entities that may have been previously compromised.

Threats observed include:

Malicious cyber actors rely on basic social engineering methods to entice a user to carry out a specific action. These actors are taking advantage of human traits such as curiosity and concern around the coronavirus pandemic in order to persuade potential victims to:

To create the impression of authenticity, malicious cyber actors may spoof sender information in an email to make it appear to come from a trustworthy source, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) or an individual with “Dr.” in their title. In several examples, actors send phishing emails that contain links to a fake email login page. Other emails purport to be from an organization’s human resources (HR) department and advise the employee to open the attachment.

Be on the lookout for phishing emails. The same ways to prevent falling victim to a phishing attack applies in this case: