San Mateo, May 12 – At NetSTAR we continually scan the internet to identify and categorize web threats. Over the past three months, we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of phishing attacks related to Covid-19 and coronavirus. Overall phishing attacks globally have more than doubled, and in some geographies have reached 600% of previous levels.
Early phishing attacks and scams related to Covid-19 generally centered on warnings, such as emails sent by criminals asking recipients to visit certain URLs to learn about personal safety. The next wave of Covid-19 phishes often urged recipients to visit sites where they could learn about prevention and cures. Most recently, many coronavirus phishes and scams are encouraging recipients to visit URLs to learn about economic recovery updates or financial assistance.
Steve Earnshaw, NetSTAR Vice President of Product Management, said “Covid-19 is the latest global topic to drive a surge in phishing attacks. We see periodic new waves of phishes tied to emergent topics and are diligent in identifying and categorizing these threats for the benefits of our partners and their customers. Many phishing attacks are short-lived; we are committed to immediate attack identification and quick updates to our threat database for our partners.”
NetSTAR identifies the IP addresses of hosts that source phishing attacks, as well as URLs embedded in those attacks. These URLs and IPs are added to the NetSTAR threat database on a continuous basis, and NetSTAR URL and IP categorization databases are also updated accordingly.