Phishing firms in India posing as WHO, banks to defraud people, says Google
Hack-for-hire firms, most of them located in India, are creating accounts spoofing the World Health Organisation (WHO) and targeting business leaders in financial services, consulting, and healthcare corporations in america, the united kingdom and Bahrain among other countries amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a written report by Google.
The tech giant noted that numerous coronavirus-themed attacks have been found out and confirmed by its teams as the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted people's lives and businesses around the world.
Citing an example of one such sort of attack, Google said, "We've seen new activity from 'hack-for-hire' firms, many based in India, which may have been creating Gmail accounts spoofing the WHO".
"The accounts have largely targeted business leaders in financial services, consulting, and healthcare corporations within numerous countries including the US, Slovenia, Canada, India, Bahrain, Cyprus, and the united kingdom," Google said in a recently available blogpost.
These e-mails encourage individuals to join up for direct notifications from the WHO to remain informed of coronavirus-related announcements, and include a link to attacker-hosted websites that bear a solid resemblance to the state WHO website, the blog explained.
The websites typically feature fake login pages that prompt potential victims to stop their Google account credentials, and occasionally inspire individuals to stop other personal information, such as for example their phone numbers, it added.
Google said its Advanced Protection Program (APP) uses hardware security keys and provides the strongest protections available against phishing and account hijackings to greatly help protect users against these kinds of tracks, and was especially designed for high-risk accounts.
"Generally, 2020 has been dominated by COVID-19. The pandemic has taken centre stage in people's everyday lives, in the international news media, and in the world of government-backed hacking," the blog page said.
Microsoft had also recently highlighted an identical trend. It had mentioned that cybercrooks are employing COVID-19 to create ransomware and phishing attacks, and over 9,000 coronavirus-themed attacks were seen in India between February 2 and could 2. About 19 million such attacks were noted in Asia.
