COVID-19, A Godsend for Hackers

With COVID-19 forcing most Australian’s to work from home the number of scams circulating the web are on a steep increase.

During the COVID crisis, internet and electronic device usage has soared above normal rates which has resulted in a large number of individuals being scammed from the safety of their own houses.

The Australian Government has advised ‘Cyber Security Tips from Working at Home’ as Government’s ScamWatch says more than 1000 coronavirus-related scams have been reported since the beginning of COVID-19. 

ScamWatch has released data from April saying that more than $16.3 million have been lost due to scams, this is compared to $9.8 million in 2019 and $7.9 million in 2018. With 88% of Australian’s being urged to work from home cybercriminals have jumped on the opportunity of increased web usage during this chaotic time. Superannuation, MyGov and banking scams are only a small percentage of the legitimate looking texts and emails that are being spread across the community.

On March 20 a new phishing campaign emerged where individuals received SMS messages from MyGov, the text was illegitimately sent by cybercriminals but they had managed to make the text appear below previous Government texts making it extremely difficult for individuals to realise it was a scam. 

ScamWatch is advising people to report scams through the ScamWatch website, they also urge people not to provide banking details or personal details to strangers or anonymous websites. 

The Australian Government has provided us with 9 things we can do to try to reduce cybercrime around the time of COVID-19; some of these include creating strong passwords, updating software regularly, securing devices when they are not in use and to use trusted sources of information.

The Australian Cyber Security Centre has said that cybercriminals are directing people towards sites that are designed to install malicious software or steal personal software. Since the outbreak many illegitimate COVID-19 websites have been created by cybercriminals seeking to exploit individuals. 

There is not much authorities can do to limit the scams spreading around communities except warn people on what to look out for and ways everyone can protect themselves. In this chaotic time internet scams should not be a daily worry on peoples minds but with millions of dollars being lost monthly it doesn’t look like the scammers will ease up any time soon.