Since mid-February, researchers at Check Point have seen an escalation in the number of these attacks from a few hundred daily, to more than 5,000 on March 28 alone.

The following graph represents all coronavirus-related attacks based on ThreatCloud, Check Point’s threat intelligence engine.

Credit: Check Point.

For these purposes, coronavirus-related attacks are understood to mean any website with “corona” or “covid” in the domain, as well as files with “corona” or related file names.

Additionally, researchers looked for coronavirus-related subject lines in email.

In the last two weeks alone, more than 30,000 new coronavirus-related domains have been registered.

Credit: Check Point.

As for how to protect yourself, the same rules apply as always: double check website addresses to look for misspellings or anything else that seems slightly off; be wary of opening emails, especially those with attachments, from an unknown sender; and be sure you’re buying products from reputable sources, not an email link — Check Point suggests googling the product or retailer and buying from them directly.

on Check Point

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