Security News > 2021 > November > The COVID-19 crisis has fueled the increase of cybercrime in all its forms

Criminals have been quick to abuse the current circumstances to increase profits, spreading their tentacles to various areas and exposing vulnerabilities, connected to systems, hospitals or individuals.

Europol's Executive Director Catherine De Bolle highlighted: "Worldwide operations, such as the successful takedown of EMOTET botnet, have demonstrated the effectiveness of international cooperation. Ransomware groups have attempted to disrupt critical infrastructures, such as service providers and government institutions, to increase their profits with no concern for the possible damages such interceptions may cause to public safety and security. To this, the collective response of our international law enforcement community is clear: the authorities and the private sector worldwide stand strong and ready to mitigate together any threat that blackmails the stability of our societies."

The key threats Ransomware affiliate programs enable a larger group of criminals to attack big corporations and public institutions by threatening them with multi-layered extortion methods such as DDoS attacks.

Online shopping has led to a steep increase in online fraud.

While mass distributed ransomware seems to be in decline, cybercrime groups and their affiliates opt for well-orchestrated manual attacks against large corporations and government institutions.

Child abusers have exploited the increased, unsupervised presence of children online during the pandemic in order to increase their grooming activities.

News URL

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2021/11/18/covid-19-cybercrime/