Russian experts says the number of cyber threats increased during COVID-19

Cyber attack prevention experts recorded a sharp increase in the number of cyber threats and outlined the main trends in computer crimes during the COVID-19.

The report was presented at the international forum of the Academy of Management of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation “Strategic development of the system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia: state, trends, prospects”.

The main conclusion of the study is the rapid growth of computer crime, primarily financial fraud using social engineering, as well as the exploitation of the COVID-19 theme in malicious mailings, switching operators of encryption viruses to large targets, as well as active recruitment of new participants to criminal communities.

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, one of the main trends of digital transformation is the development of remote methods of committing crimes, crimes have gone from offline to online. Almost 70% of registered crimes related to illegal arms trafficking in 2020 were committed using the Internet – remotely and anonymously. The same applies to the illegal sale of drugs, counterfeit money, securities and documents.

Throughout 2020, Group-IB recorded an increase in the number of financial scams using social engineering – vishing, phishing -the victims of which were mainly Bank customers.

At the same time, the fraud implementation schemes themselves have not actually changed. The main motive of cybercriminals is the same: stealing money or information that can be sold. Now it is popular to sell fake digital passes, send messages about fines for violation of quarantine, fake courier sites, fraudulent mailings on behalf of the Zoom video conferencing service.

This year has given birth to even more groups and partner programs, as well as new collaborations. So the operators of the QakBot banking Trojan joined Big Game Hunting, and recently the FIN7 group, which actively attacked banks and hotels, joined the REvil ransomware partner program. The size of the ransom has also increased significantly: cryptolocker operators often ask for several million dollars, and sometimes tens of millions.