As much of the world grapples with the new coronavirus, COVID-19, and how to handle it, attackers are taking advantage of the widespread discussion of COVID-19 in emails and across the web.
Barracuda researchers have seen a steady increase in the number of coronavirus COVID-19-related spear-phishing attacks since January, but they have observed a recent spike in this type of attack, up 667-percent since the end of February.
Between March 1 and March 23, Barracuda Sentinel has detected 467,825 spear-phishing email attacks, and 9,116 of those detections were related to COVID-19, representing about 2 percent of attacks. In comparison, a total of 1,188 coronavirus-related spear-phishing attacks were detected in February, and just 137 were detected in January. Although the overall number of these attacks is still low compared to other threats, the threat is growing quickly.
