Capturing the Cyber Threats on Home Base Amidst COVID-19

While staying in and working from home has become a new normal amidst the COVID-19, it has increased the risk of cyber threats as cybercriminals prey on people’s fear, remote tools, and stressed IT systems. Here’s a look at how the cyber threat landscape has transitioned in the past five months.

Attacks on remote tools surge

Since the outbreak of the Coronavirus, millions of workers working from home are accessing organizations’ resources through VPNs, video-conferencing apps, and other cloud-based services. Unfortunately, this has created an opportunity for cybercriminals to deploy campaigns against these tools to gain remote access to networks and machines.

• McAfee researchers reported a 630% rise in cloud-based cyber-attacks between January and April, 2020. These attacks were aimed at accessing cloud accounts with important credentials and targeted collaboration services like Microsoft Office 365.
• According to CheckPoint, cybercriminals also impersonated video-conferencing apps like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams to lure victims in different phishing and malware attacks.
• Several cyberattacks campaigns that leveraged fake VPN apps and unpatched VPNs were also carried out either to spread malware or trick users in scams.
• Additionally, Kaspersky recorded around 100,000-150,000 attacks on the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) since the start of the outbreak.

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