The UK’s HMRC detected a 73% increase in email phishing attacks in the six months that the COVID-19 pandemic struck the country, in accordance to official info obtained pursuing a FOI ask for by accountancy firm Lanop Outsourcing.
It uncovered that from March to September 2020, there was an ordinary of 45,046 email attacks per thirty day period in the UK. This compares to an typical of 26,100 in the two months previous the introduction of COVID-19 lockdown steps, in January and February. In complete, HMRC revealed it experienced gained 367,520 studies of phishing email attacks during 2020 up to September.
Through the six months considering the fact that the begin of lockdown, September experienced the biggest regular quantity, at 57,801 situations, while August seasoned the lowest, at 38,096.
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On top of that, HMRC described 199,621 situations of phone scams and 58,921 SMS referrals throughout this period of time. Curiously, phone and text frauds ended up at their least expensive level in the first total thirty day period of lockdown, in April, with 425 and 2515 conditions described, respectively. This could be thanks to cyber-criminals focusing on email phishing attacks to get edge of the shift to house operating at this time.
Phone and SMS cons started to grow yet again when lockdown limits were being 1st lifted in the UK in June, with phone cons steadily rising to arrive at a peak of 46,015 in September.
Steve Peake, UK systems engineer manager, Barracuda Networks, commented: “Interestingly, Barracuda’s personal info not long ago unveiled a similar sample of cyber-attacks dealing with typical firms, with our scientists observing a 667% spike in spear-phishing attacks from February to March, as a immediate result of coronavirus. In the same way, other sectors, these kinds of as education and learning, have also noticed an upward trend of COVID-19 similar phishing attacks for the duration of our battle versus the virus.
“As the pandemic continues, enterprises must foresee COVID-19 themed attacks to enhance in amount. It’s also worthy of noting that cyber-attacks and frauds aren’t just contained to email messages, SMS-based phishing attacks, or ‘Smishing,’ and fraudulent phone calls also pose a serious risk to consumers, workers and the normal community.”
Mohammad Sohaib, director at Lanop Outsourcing, additional: “Cyber-criminals have not skipped a trick when it comes to applying the devastating coronavirus to lure unknowing victims into leaking their own private details, these as passwords and payment particulars, by means of a phishing rip-off.
“In just one these example, scammers impersonated HMRC to trick business owners into believing that their VAT deferral application, a critical authorities assist initiative in the course of the pandemic, experienced been rejected. They would then redirect victims to a web-site with official HMRC branding, before thieving credit card facts.”
Last thirty day period it was disclosed that HMRC recorded 521,582 malicious emails among June and September.
Some elements of this write-up are sourced from:
www.infosecurity-magazine.com