Cybercriminals Flourish Amidst Coronavirus-Related Panic

While many people are refraining from leaving their homes in fear of catching the new COVID-19, criminals and fraudsters are trying to benefit from the overall panic and chaos. Thus, a group of anonymous criminals released a new ransomware disguised as a live tracker of coronavirus expansion.

The app is called “CovidLock”. As soon as it is installed on your smartphone, it gets into the Android system, changes all passwords and completely blocks all data demanding a $100 in bitcoins as a ransom. Otherwise, the malware threatens to leak all private data in the web. DomainTools security research team reported that the App might be downloaded from coronavirusapp(.)site, so the users should refrain from visiting this website.

The team has also registered a general increase of domain names that have the words “coronavirus” or “COVID-19”, with many of them reportedly being scams. On one hand, it is quite obvious as these words are at the top of search engines lists, so the use guarantees a website, service or content good attention from the Internet users. On the other hand, this hype is used by witty fraudsters and criminals for tricking trusty people into losing their money or data.

Cryptocurrency Community Suffers Greatly

There’s no need to tell you that the COVID-19 outbreak caused a lot of turmoil over the entire world. Cryptocurrency community is not an exception. Due to expansion of the virus, major crypto events have been cancelled, as coinidol.com, a world blockchain news outlet, has previously reported. There were also cases of contamination among event participants. At least six people got ill after the Ethereum Community Conference in Paris.

Some enthusiasts from the blockchain and crypto world joined their forces to fund the development of the vaccine against COVID-19. The group called CoroHope now holds a bitcoin crowdsourcing campaign to raise funds for the research. The Red Cross also accepts bitcoin donations to combat consequences of the deadly virus. 

According to the statistics, as of March 18, there are 202,309 cases with 8,013 deaths. 82,813 people have successfully combated the disease. Most countries have taken strict quarantine measures to tackle the spread of COVID-19.

There are always two sides of the medal. On one side, there are people willing to stop the disease and bring their lives back to normal. On the other side, numerous fraudsters do not give a damn what will happen with this world as long as they have the chance to fill their pockets.