Security News > 2021 > June > Digital criminals turn toward vaccines to capitalize on COVID-19

Cybercriminals continue to capitalize on the hysteria and worry caused by COVID-19, both in the physical sphere and digital ecosystem, exploiting the significant global unmet demand for vaccines.

Over the past year, my firm has continuously monitored the surface, deep, and dark web for malicious activity related to COVID-19, witnessing a trend in the manipulation of the digital ecosystem for commercial gain or other malicious ends related to the topic of vaccines.

We have analyzed billions of breached or exposed data-including a peek into deep and dark marketplaces for illicit activity and actors profiting from vaccines - and will expound on these findings in a later report, but in the meantime, I've outlined two key insights we've gathered thus far: vaccine hesitancy related to misinformation and disinformation narratives, and illicit vaccine activity on the dark web.

Across global geographies, we've conducted continuous, comprehensive analysis of the digital public sphere since February of 2020-including social media, news, forums, blogs, and other public digital communities-for English-language conversations related to COVID-19 and vaccines, parsing through more than 100 million results, with more than 33.5 million geolocated in the United States.

WHO held a press conference earlier this year to address this very issue, warning that "Some falsified products are also being sold as COVID-19 vaccines on the internet, especially on the dark web." WHO would go on to say that it was aware that ministries of health and regulatory agencies across the globe "Have received suspicious offers to supply COVID-19 vaccines."

Experts have repeatedly warned about the security risks caused by the COVID-19 vaccine rollout - and we've seen first-hand the impact it has had on the digital information ecosystem.

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