Hackers cash in on Covid-19 to launch series of attacks

Hacking groups using the Covid-19 pandemic as cover conducted more than 500,000 phishing attacks in Kenya over the three months to June, the second highest tally among African countries.

Moscow-based anti-virus software company, Kaspersky said one in every four phishing attacks in Africa between April and June happened in Kenya.

South Africa recorded the highest incidents of spam and phishing attack at 616,666 while Egypt had 492,532 compared to Nigeria’s 299,426. Kenya’s East Africa neighbours Rwanda and Ethiopia reported 68,931 and 31,585 cases of phishing respectively.

Phishing entails a deceitful cybercrime practice of sending emails purporting to be from reputable companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.

Cyber users would commonly receive an email claiming to be from important institutions such as a bank or even from a social networking site. Such emails usually include a link to a fake website that is well-crafted to resemble the real one. Should one fall prey and log into the fake site, your username and password is sent to a third party who then uses it to access your real accounts and steal funds or your identity.

Kaspersky said between April and June hackers targeted cyber users seeking information about the coronavirus outbreak and how to contain it.

“When summarising the results of the first quarter, we assumed that Covid-19 would be the main topic for spammers and phishers for the past few months. And it certainly happened” said Tatyana Sidorina, security expert at Kaspersky.