Security News

Quick-response codes used by a COVID-19 contact-tracing program were hijacked by a man who simply slapped up scam QR codes on top to redirect users to an anti-vaccination website, according to local police. Fake QR codes were placed over genuine COVID safe check-ins and once scanned, it is understood it led people to a website with information against vaccinations.

As India battles a surging second wave of COVID-19 cases and severe shortages of medical supplies, the nation's government has told Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to remove social media posts it says may panic its populace with misinformation. The takedown requests were lodged on Friday, a day before India recorded more than 300,000 new COVID-19 cases for the first time ever in 24 hours.

COVID-19 has accelerated the shift to digital, creating a boom in biometric adoption. Biometric deployment isn't without challenges.

Sivan Tehila, cybersecurity strategist at Perimeter 81, discusses climate change and the cyber-resilience lessons companies should take away from dealing with the pandemic. While COVID-19 caught many businesses off guard, smart executives are already thinking about the next global crisis and what challenges it might present for IT security.

McAfee released its new report, examining cybercriminal activity related to malware and the evolution of cyber threats in the third and fourth quarters of 2020. In Q4, there was an average of 648 threats per minute, an increase of 60 threats per minute over Q3. The two quarters also saw COVID-19-related cyber-attack detections increase by 240% in Q3 and 114% in Q4, while Powershell threats again surged 208% due to continued increases in Donoff malware activity.

We look at the big-money hacks from the 2021 Pwn2Own competition. We investigate the difficulties of hiring an assassin via the dark web.

More than 40 organizations have been targeted in a global campaign focused on the COVID-19 vaccine cold chain infrastructure, which handles the distribution of vaccines and their storage at the required temperatures. A total of 44 organizations in 14 countries were targeted.

In a new report, X-Force said it recently discovered a series of phishing emails targeting 44 companies across 14 countries, all involved in the coronavirus vaccine cold chain, an aspect of the overall supply chain that ensures the safety of vaccines transported and stored in cold environments. Seen last September, the phishing campaign deploys emails spoofing a business executive from Haier Biomedical, a legitimate member company of the COVID-19 vaccine supply chain and reportedly the world's only complete cold chain provider.

Despite warnings from the CDC and news media, many vaccinated individuals are putting themselves at risk by posting images of their vaccine cards online, or unknowingly storing unsecure digital images on their devices. Sontiq announced that consumers can gain increased peace of mind and further protection of their sensitive medical files by placing the images into a Secure Identity Vault, which is included as part of Sontiq's identity protection products.

An iPhone and Android app called NHS COVID-19 is the official iPhone and Android coronavirus contact tracing software for the vast majority of the population of Great Britain. Apparently, the government was keen to have an updated version of the NHS COVID-19 app ready in time, with added location tracking features that would allow users to share their location logs with the health service.