Security News > 2020 > April > Cyberattackers Ramp Up to 1.5M COVID-19 Emails Per Day

Cyberattackers have reached a peak of sending 1.5 million malicious emails per day related to the COVID-19 pandemic over the course of the last three months, according to new research.

"We saw a rise in unwanted emails containing embedded URLs using the keywords of 'COVID' or 'corona,' from negligible values in January 2020 to over half a million blocked per day the end-of-March onwards," he wrote in the post.

Legitimate emails concerning COVID-19 ramped up in March, declined slightly, and then picked up again after the Easter and Passover holidays, he said.

"Traditionally, the number of malicious emails seen per day through Forcepoint Cloud Email Security solutions are orders of magnitude less than the number of observed spam emails," Taylor wrote.

The largest increase in malicious email activity happened in the week March 23, with a 35 percent increase in these types of emails over the final working day of the previous week, he noted.

News URL

https://threatpost.com/cyberattackers-1-5m-covid-19-emails-per-day/154970/