Haven for hackers?

As we know, the Covid pandemic has changed our lives in many ways. Leveraging the advantage, hackers have switched their focus on people working remotely online, and they are using fear created by Covid-19 to actively target vulnerable people to steal money and sensitive data.

To make people aware City First brings before you Shivam Bangwalis, a young entrepreneur from Uttarakhand, who is the founder of People News Chronicle, Youthistaan & Branding Panther.

Shivam said, during the pandemic where so many people are working from home at enterprise-level security, devices such as routers, social media and emails can be hacked to plant a range of malware.

He said hackers are using panic and confusion to trick people by sending them fake emails, messages on behalf of the government, WHO or any social media company and then downloading infected payloads or malware on their devices through that malware text/files. COVID-19 has started casting its shadow on cyberspace as well.

CAUTION WITH SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is also being directly attacked through messages, says Shivam. Such devices could be turned into bots or used to launch attacks on systems as soon as employees download the files provided by the hacker to them.

The files as soon as they are downloaded start their work in uploading the user data to their server which may cause a huge loss to the user. To be alert Shivam said we have to check where the e-mail is coming from.

If this domain is instagram.com or Facebook.com then only it is confirmed that it is an official email. Hackers puzzle us with instgram.com or instagraam.com which they usually buy and try to scam people.

Also, many people don’t read the domain, they just see it in a jiffy and they think it’s instagram.com but when one sees it with attention then the spurious name is detected.

“There are emails containing subject lines such as ‘coronavirus alert ‘,’ ‘500 coronavirus deaths in the last few hours list’, and ‘this drug could save your life,” said Shivam. “Emails seeking donations in the name of WHO (World Health Organization) have also been seen.”

SAFE SIDE

“To be on the safe side, users must first check the source, sender profile and compare them with the original from going to the related official website, before downloading any of the files to their device, says Shivam.

As governments and companies scramble to contain the pandemic, security researchers are trying to better understand and detect the current spike in malware.

And as long as the threat from the coronavirus remains, so will the risk from hackers. For social media, we should not click on the link provided by any of the accounts saying that they are the official members/worker at that social media company.

Facebook and Instagram clearly mention on their policy that we will never text you or reach you from text messages. They only will reach you through the support inbox provided by the platforms, which is safe. This is the only thing that can keep users safe in this digital era.