This appeared last week.
Email, SMS vaccine scams on the way: cyber experts
Tom Burton Government editor
Feb 16, 2021 – 4.34pm
Cyber experts and authorities are warning of an inundation of vaccine scams, as Australia prepares to distribute COVID-19 vaccines from February 22.
The roll-out of the vaccine in the US and Britain has inspired many vaccine-related scams, with a 300 per cent jump in vaccine-related website domains in the lead-up to the first jabs being distributed.
More than 5000 new domains were registered, according to the CEO of cyber research firm, Security in Depth, Michael Connory.
“We’ve been seeing in the US, but specifically in the UK, the large number – and it’s a huge number – of vaccine-related cyber attacks, primarily through phishing, with individuals and criminal organisations looking at obtaining credentials for individuals,” Mr Connory said.
Cyber criminals have also set up fake British National Health Service websites that send emails asking for confirmation of vaccination appointments as a way of stealing people’s identities, he said.
“So you put in your username, you set up a password, you set up a time and date so to speak. And you need to also communicate or provide some documentation on who you are to be able to streamline the process now.”
“We saw a million of these emails go out in the UK about six weeks ago. It was picked up very quickly as there was over 1000 complaints within a 24 hour period,” he said.
Mr Connory said it was believed the attacks came from Russia using compromised US infrastructure to hide the scams.
He predicted a rise in text message scams, given some internet users were becoming wise to phishing scams.
“In the last 12 months, in regards to phishing, there’s been a significant improvement from that 30 per cent [of people clicking through from emails] down to about 10 to 15 per cent.”
“In the US people were texted asking them to pay $US150 ($190) to jump the queue and get early access to the backside and we believe that that will happen here as well.”
Much more here:
What to say other than to remind us all just how many ‘bad actors’ there are out there.
We all need to remain alert – as ever – especially as the vaccine rollout has now kicked off!
David.
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