When the COVID-19 pandemic picked up steam in its initial spread across the world in March, instances of pandemic-related phishing campaigns were rife across the internet.
Thousands of email attacks and scams cropped up, and many more fell victim to them. Much of their success can be attributed to their exploitation of people’s fears around COVID-19 – many campaigns spoke of virus hotspots, or posed as government health departments to seem credible.
Now, with several months between the first reports of the virus, many phishing campaigns have changed course – instead of stoking fear, and with dozens of efforts to develop vaccines entering their final stages around the world, they are exploiting hopes for such a vaccine.
According to new research from Check Point, the primary attack delivery method is email, constituting 82% of all attack vectors for malicious files in the last month.