Beware: Vaccine-phishing scams have risen by 500 percent

Vaccine-phishing scams have increased by 530 per cent, as stated by a new study by Unit 42, the Palo Alto Networks threat intelligence company.

The study examined vaccine-related phishing scams between December 2020 and February 2021. In the same period, phishing scams relating to and/or targeting healthcare and clinics increased by 189%.

Unit 42 has declared the report documents a cybercrime “ gold rush” directed at gaining the benefit of COVID-19 in each possible way. It reveals how fraudsters are having exceptional progress during the COVID-19 pandemic as individuals are continually looking for data on the disease, treatments, vaccines, and the political crisis. 

To gather the study, Unit 42 created collections of specific keywords that served as signs for every COVID-associated topic and applied keyword-matching to find which phishing URLs were associated with every topic. This explained that fraudsters have been consistently changing their strategies to adapt to the changes of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the focus in early 2020 was on test tools and personal protective equipment, this has now transformed to the immunization clinics, and most presently, vaccine approval procedure. 

The study presents how fraudsters have set up false platforms to acquire people’s personal information, involving a fake Pfizer and BioNTech platform. This phishing platform urges people to log in with their Office 365 personal data, apparently to enrol for the vaccine. 

One specified phishing platform used a rising prevalent method known as “client-side cloaking” – requesting users to click the “login” key to avoid digitized phishing indicators. 

Microsoft is a corporation mostly targeted by criminals, with fake Microsoft pages set up by fraudsters to acquire data from staff members at companies such as Walgreens in the United State, Pharmascience in Canada, and Junshi Biosciences in China.  

As the use of vaccination increases, it is estimated that phishing attacks similar to vaccine distribution will persist to increase worldwide. 

The study also includes recommendations for each person and company to shield themselves from phishing scams.