The malware shown in this timeline have been chosen due to their capacity for damage (such as ransomware) or their ability to propagate (Emotet for spam, or other worm like activities).Ī weekly distribution of all known COVID related IOCs per week is shown below. The timeline below shows a subset of prevalent malware families observed in our spam traps with references to COVID-19/Coronavirus. McAfee utilizes several internal and external sourcing techniques for malware harvesting including collaboration with other industry partners as part of the Cyber Threat Alliance. Please read our recommendation section and view our IOC section (partial IOC list based on this article), expert rules section (covers few tactics based on this article).

This blog serves to remind customers to utilize the various levers present in our endpoint product and our expanded portfolio such as McAfee’s Unified Cloud Edge. This is not intended to be an exhaustive report due to the scope of a continually evolving landscape for COVID-19 therefore, we cover a subset of threats directed towards malware, spam and malicious/scam URL campaigns. Over the last few months of 2020, McAfee researchers have been hard at work during this time to keep our customers safe by more directed monitoring and adaptation of our detection stack to better manage the COVID-19 threat landscape. These are trying times for us and a feast for fear mongering malware criminals. For now, we continue to deal with a barrage of news articles around the pandemic, managing supply and demand of household goods in stores and online, and a shortage of medical supplies such as preventative masks, gloves and sanitizer. A lot more time is spent indoors and online and there continues to be anxiety around when normalcy will be restored. The weeks of quarantine have forced individuals and organizations to quickly adapt to a work from home model. In this blog we continue to discuss COVID-19 themed attacks and how to stay vigilant. The first discusses how attackers would like to leverage this pandemic as an opportunity to attack organizations, the second gives a preview of attackers playing on the fears of the general public grappling to get a hold of a cure, help manage this illness and stay safe while the third gives some direction to organizations on how to verify their security controls. McAfee recently released blogs around Covid-19 related threats – Staying safe while working remotely, COVID-19 Threat Update Now Includes Blood for Sale and Transitioning to a Mass Remote Workforce. Special thanks to Prajwala Rao, Oliver Devane, Shannon Cole, Ankit Goel and members of Malware Research for their contribution and monitoring of related threatsĪs COVID-19 continues to spread across the world, it is no surprise that malware authors are exploiting the pandemic.

Covid phishing email examples