Remote access to business environments has become a vital part of everyday work during the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the common ways an employee like a tech support staffer can connect to a remote employee’s work computer is the Remote Desktop service, which has some well-known security vulnerabilities.

At the moment, scammers are trying to cash in by sending out emails that promise pandemic relief money. The emails impersonate official entities such as the U.S. Federal Reserve or other official institutions. With subject lines like “Receive Payment” or “Relief Payment Form”, anxious users are motivated to click on a link that redirects to a phishing website, which tries to steal personal information or online banking credentials. Other email variants use these stimulus bills as bait to deliver a password protected “COVID 19 Relief.doc” document that contains a financial trojan or ransomware. And we still see waves of classic COVID-19 themed malware threats making the rounds. One such threat example that we came across recently dropped a combination of ransomware and infostealer malware.

At Acronis, we’ve taken the ability for security software to defend itself seriously right from the start. In 2017 and 2018, our solutions were tested for self-defense capabilities by independent labs, and their research revealed Acronis Cyber Protection Solutions delivered excellent results. Of course, we continue to improve our technologies with every release and constantly research what we can improve in all aspects of cyber protection. Given our mission of delivering cyber protection solutions that ensure the safety, accessibility, privacy, authenticity, and security (SAPAS) of data, in preparing for our upcoming Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud launch, we improved the self-defense capabilities even further.

Cybercriminals continue to exploit the COVID-19 theme in their cyberattacks, trying to trick user into entering their credentials or personal information on a phishing web page or loading malicious documents that pretend to contain essential information related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Here is a quick roundup of examples that show how scammers and hackers are leveraging the crisis.