Criminal hackers are increasingly targeting their victims. And the corona epidemic increases the possible gates of entry.
Despite all warnings, online blackmail with encryption software is causing increasing damage worldwide. As a result, not only is the number of these attacks increasing, the sums demanded by the extortionists are also increasing, as the cyber experts report. The increase in ransomware attacks is a global phenomenon, with most of the cases in the US at the moment.
Online blackmailers are increasingly targeting critical systems. In the past year, we saw the largest increase in ransomware attacks among healthcare providers. In the US alone were many healthcare providers affected. The emergency number was therefore no longer available several times at national level. Operations had to be postponed, emergency call control systems no longer worked.
Ransomware means that blackmailers install encryption software on their victims computer systems and ask for money to decrypt it. In Europe, we’ve seen the biggest ransomware damage. On the one hand, this was a manufacturer of special hearing aids that suffered damage of 100 million dollars, and on the other hand, the aluminum manufacturer was affected with a loss of 75 million.
Coronavirus Is Becoming The Subject Of Spam Emails
Accumulation damage means in the technical language of insurers an event that affects a large number of people or companies at the same time. An example would be a nationwide drought that is drying up the harvest of tens of thousands of farmers at the same time. Now coronavirus is becoming the subject of fraudulent emails. The fact that many employees are currently working with mobile access to the company network at home could represent a security vulnerability. This can lead to capacity problems and reduced system performance, as well as a reduction in IT security. The implications of the pandemic on information security are often neglected in the current discussion.
We are seeing increasing professionalization of cybercriminal structures. There is a twofold development: First, the attacks are becoming more targeted, more individualized, especially when the potential return is high. In addition, there are widespread phenomena such as phishing emails that still work perfectly.
