COVID 19 -PHISHING SCAMS- (Blog)


INTRODUCTION

The concept of phishing is a cyber crime. It is a cyber attack by using E-Mail as a weapon. It is the attempt to collect sensitive data such as credit card details, ATM card passwords, Login ID’s, user names or any other personal details for some malicious reason by fraudulently showing as a trustworthy entity. The coronavirus COVID 19 related phishing attacks email has been increased recently. The report says, at the end of February the number of phishing attacks increased by 66.7 % . The pandemic situation continues to spawn bunches of such phishing campaign by clicking on into harmful links, emails, text message or through social media post. 

CERT WARNING ON COVID 19 PHISHING SCAMS

The computer emergency response team warned that the phishing attacks could impersonate the government department, agencies and bodies. They said further about the spoof email called ncovv2019@gov.in can be used as a phishing email. The CERT also warned about the free testing of COVID 19 targeting the citizens of Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. This phishing attacks works by driving them into fake websites and by entering personal details eventually directs into the malicious link. They even urge the citizens not to open any unsolicited emails/ messages even if it comes from close one’s and also not to share any financial or personal details.

PHISHING INCIDENTS AMID COVID 19

By January 2020, the malspam coronavirus themed emails were distributed malware and trojans, mainly the Emotet banking trojan. During February, Phishing campaigns targeted cosmetics, finance, transportation and pharmaceutical industries. They also tricked people by sending notification from the CDC and prevention to steal credentials. Banks like SBI, ICICI and YES bank warned its account holder to not to open any unsolicitor email regarding free COVID 19 test or to click anything which says act now. There was a sudden spike in the number of phishing attacks towards Indian organization in February 2020. As the COVID 19 outbreak in India, the number of phishing scams in India doubled in March 2020. This pandemic situation gave hackers and threat actors the greatest opportunity to launch cyber attacks. As countries are busy in controlling and preventing COVID 19 utilizing this in exploiting Indian organization. The attackers also impersonated personnel from Government agencies engaged in combating the COVID -19 crisis. The Microsoft also warned its users last month to be aware of malware themed phishing campaign claiming to be from Johns Hopkin University. The most common method of phishing used in India is through email pretending to be from a bank stressing them to update them to the server. Recently, the Indian government websites and ATM faced DDOS attack with china’s chengudu origin.  

In the famous case of, 

ΓΌ  Nasscom v. Ajay sood and ors

  The Delhi High court stated that in India there is no prescribed punishment for phishing it held phishing on the internet is an illegal act and a misrepresentation made in the course of trade leading confusion and harm to the source and the consumer, entailing an injunction and recovery of damages of Rs.16 lakhs . 

CONCLUSION 

From the month of January ,2020 there has been enormous amount of cases in phishing scams. India witnessed increase of 37% cyber attacks from the first three months of 2020 and also 11th rank world wide in the number of cyber attacks. The smart phone users are more targeted because of increase in digitalisation in order to prevent this businesses, firms and agencies are stressed to increase the cyber security for the source and for the customer. Apart from this prevention the government requested people to use anti virus tools and to report unusual activity or cyber attack to CERT-In. The IANS report says beware of spelling mistake, email addresses and unfamiliar email senders. Apart from all the advices and reports, one has to keep themselves in a safe place, beware of an unsolicited mail and not to open any spreadsheets or content which says to act now. 

- A. Jai Shree Shivamaithy

School of Excellence in Law.


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