BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 18
By Sadraddin Agjayev – Trend:
Malefactors around the world actively take advantage of the current situation with the COVID-19 pandemics, creating numerous phishing web-pages and sites allegedly selling masks or tests for coronavirus, Olga Rodicheva, spokesperson for Kaspersky Lab in Moscow, told Trend.
According to her, since the beginning of 2020, Kaspersky Lab’s experts have detected over 5,000 such suspicious resources.
As the spokesperson noted, in March of this year, 24 percent of internet users in Azerbaijan were attacked by malwares and 32 percent of users were faced with local threats (that is, those that were detected on computers or flash memory, memory cards, external hard drives).
"Such cyber threats are characteristic of our country and they didn’t undergo significant changes," Mushvig Mammadov, official representative of Kaspersky Lab in Azerbaijan, said.
According to him, some malwares began mimicking services for videoconferencing. Kaspersky Lab detected about 1,300 files with unwanted applications and even malicious code, in which the names of popular services for online conferences were used, and the names of Zoom, Webex, Slack and other applications were exploited by the malefactors.
“Perhaps these malicious files are used to attack corporate users, since namely these services are often used by business representatives during remote work. Such names mainly hid adware, but in addition to it, threats were also detected that hide as files with the '.lnk' extension, which is a shortcut to applications. The vast majority of these files actually turned out to be exploits, that is, 'malware' that exploit vulnerabilities in various software programs," Mammadov noted.
"Moreover, many groups involved in targeted attacks on organizations use the theme of coronovirus, sending documents allegedly from official structures. Several organizations related to health care, including a hospital in the Czech Republic, have been attacked by cybercriminals," he added.
It’s extremely important for users today to remember the following rules of digital hygiene.
- Use complex passwords and for each platform create unique combinations for entering;
- Download programs and applications only from authorized resources, not to do this through unfamiliar user's request;
- Install antivirus programs on all devices;
- Regularly update software;
- Do not follow links from unfamiliar users and double-check any messages, for example, about cash payments, fines or fraudulent activity on the account, in reliable sources;
- Do not use corporate devices to download files from torrent trackers or network games.
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