It’s open season for hackers who prey on public health fears to try to dupe people into installing malware.
As phishing attempts related to the novel coronavirus surged in late January, another health-related scam was kicking off. Crooks were sending people fake HIV test results that were laced with malicious code. To make the ruse more believable, the emails purported to come from Vanderbilt University’s prestigious medical center.
“The psychology behind that is: Whether or not you recently did an HIV test, it is very possible that you would still be interested to see HIV test results,” said Sherrod DeGrippo, who heads the threat research and detection team at Proofpoint, the cybersecurity company that discovered the phishing campaign.
