The IT Nerd

Blood of supposedly recovered coronavirus patients on the dark web costs three times more than hiring a hitman, Atlas VPN research reveals. Cybercriminals are selling blood and other fake cures for 16 thousand dollars; meanwhile, you can commission a murder for 5 thousand dollars.

Criminals are claiming the blood as “passive vaccination”. Supposedly, the blood plasma of a recovered COVID-19 patient is harvested for the antibodies and injected into a COVID-19 patient, researchers explain. Also, criminals are selling the blood and saliva of a coronavirus survivor, or even anti-malaria drugs.

In comparison, the New York Times found a list of hitman “services” offered on the dark web. One website offers to murder a person for 5 thousand dollars, which is more than three times cheaper in comparison to coronavirus survival’s blood. 

The full report provides additional information on marketplaces for death and assassination, and analyses the pricing in the organ trade market.

To read the full report, head to: https://atlasvpn.com/blog/covid-19-survivors-blood-on-dark-web-costs-3-times-more-than-hiring-a-hitman/

According to data extracted and analyzed by Atlas VPN, remote desktop protocol (RDP) attacks rocketed by 330% amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The start of the RDP attack increase correlates almost entirely with the start of lockdowns. From March 10, 2020, RDP brute-force attacks spiked in practically all selected countries.

In the US, from March 10, 2020, until April 15, 2020, hackers carried out 32,299,662 remote desktop brute-force attacks. On average, throughout this period, there were 872,964 attacks daily.

Comparing the period of February 9 – March 9, 2020, to March 10 – April 10, 2020, the attacks in the US jumped by 330%

Over 148 million RDP attacks during the pandemic

From March 10, 2020, until April 15, 2020, hackers attacked users in the US, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Russia, and China a total of over 148 million times combined.

During this period, hackers carried out 32,299,662 remote desktop brute-force attacks on individuals and organizations in the US. Meaning, the US is the most attacked country on the list. On average, there were 872,964 attacks daily in the US.

In Spain, throughout March 10-April 15, 2020, hackers attacked workstations and corporate servers 25,510,199 times. On average, hackers attacked users in Spain 689,465 times per day.

To read the full report, head over to: https://atlasvpn.com/blog/rdp-attacks-surged-by-330-in-the-us-amid-pandemic/

Data compiled by Atlas VPN shows that in April there have been over 400 million detected malware infections, which makes over 10 million cases per day. This month, the educational field experienced the largest number of malware attacks.

In April, the number of global infections worldwide was fluctuating from 10 million to 16 million daily cases, reaching the lowest point on April 5 and the highest on April 16.

This month, the Central Asia region suffered from the largest number of local attacks, according to Kaspersky antivirus.  At least 32% of devices in Tajikistan were exposed to malware, followed by Uzbekistan, with 31%. In China, Kaspersky detected malware in nearly 27% of the devices that use their software. 

In April, Microsoft detected 6.5 million malware infections in different industries. Education was the main target – 64% of the attacks were pointed at this particular sector. With 9% of the malware infections, business and professional services was the second most-attacked industry.

The full research analyzes the rest of the malware infection numbers throughout April and lists the regions and industries that were targeted the most.

To read the full article, head to: https://atlasvpn.com/blog/nearly-404-million-malware-infections-detected-in-last-30-days-more-than-10-million-daily/ 

Data acquired by Atlas VPN shows that health-related spam emails was the most common category of spam last year. In 2019, 39% of spam emails were promoting fake pharmaceuticals and health cures.  

Industry practices show that the number of health-related spam emails is expected to grow dramatically this year. Last week, Gmail warned their customers to use the service with caution: of a total 100 million spam emails Gmail reports daily, 18 million of them were coronavirus-themed.

Last year, the number of extortion scams increased from 0% in 2018 to 10% in 2019. Last week, the FBI announced they are receiving more extortion emails than usual.

In 2019, the most common type of malware-infected files sent through email was Microsoft Office Word or Excel files. It is likely that Google Docs or Microsoft Word files are the future of phishing since it lets hackers steal more information than setting up a fake, malware-infected website would.

To read the full report, head over to:  https://atlasvpn.com/blog/39-percent-of-spam-emails-offer-fake-medical-products/ 

According to data analyzed by Atlas VPN, search queries for telemedicine grow by 525% in 2020 globally.

In January, the interest rate in the “telemedicine” keyword was 15 out of 100. It reached the maximum this month, representing a 525% growth.

Back in 2004, the popularity of telemedicine-related queries on Google was relatively high, reaching a score of 40. Throughout the next eight years, it started dropping, hitting the lowest point – an interest rate of 9. Comparing the numbers of 2004 and 2013, there has been a 344% interest rate decrease.

During 2020, Ethiopia had the highest rate of interest in telemedicine globally and reached a maximum score of 100. Meanwhile, the lowest interest rate scores were registered in Spain, Italy, France, and China.

To read the full report, head over to: https://atlasvpn.com/blog/interest-in-telemedicine-grows-by-525-percent-worldwide/ 

According to data compiled and analyzed by Atlas VPN, hackers attacked businesses more than 22 million times during the last week worldwide. Over 63% of these hacking attempts were malware attacks.

On average, there were 3.26 million cyberattacks daily throughout last week. From the chart, we can see that hackers carried most cyberattacks on April 15, with a total of over 3.6 million intrusion attempts. Interestingly, most of these cyberattacks were malware attacks.

There were around 2,070,297 malware attacks per day during last week. Malware attacks comprised 63% of the total attacks.

In comparison, phishing attacks and C&C attacks comprised 11% and 26% of total attacks, respectively.

We estimate that hackers could be attacking corporations 20 million times per day globally, and breaches will exceed the 8 billion record figure we saw in 2019.”

A broader perspective – last 30 days 

During the last 30 days, cybercriminals tried to infiltrate corporate networks nearly 100 million times. Hackers attacked businesses using malware over 57 million times.

Moreover, C&C attacks were the second most common type used by hackers, with over 27 million attacks in the last 30 days. In other words, C&C amounts to over 27% of all attacks on enterprises.

Finally, phishing scams are the least common type of attacks used by hackers, with a total of over 15 million attacks in the same time-frame. This accounts for over 15% of the total volume of attacks.

To read the full report, head over to: https://atlasvpn.com/blog/hackers-attacked-businesses-22-million-times-in-the-last-7-days-globally/

According to Atlas VPN research compiled from various publicly available sources, the number of exposed government and individual politician records increased by 278% when comparing the first quarters of 2019 and 2020.

During the first quarter of 2019, there were over 4.5 million breached records of individual politicians or government bodies globally. Meanwhile, in 2020 Q1, the number of leaked records skyrocketed, reaching over 17 million and representing a growth of nearly three times
Looking at the most significant government breach – in March 2020, The Dutch government disclosed losing two external hard drives. Both of the drives had personal information of over 6.9 million organ donors stored.

To this day, it is still unknown who the malicious actor was. There is also no evidence of anyone attempting to use the stolen information.

It has to be noted that it is often the case that data breaches come to light only after a few months. Hence, due to the coronavirus pandemic and increased hacker activity, the actual number of 2020 Q1 data breaches might be exponentially higher.

Last month, malware, phishing, command, and control were the most common types of cyberattacks. With 53%, the malware was the most popular way hackers used to intercept devices.

To read the full report, head over to: https://atlasvpn.com/blog/number-of-leaked-government-records-increases-by-278-percent-in-q1-2020/

According to Atlas VPN investigation, 37% of investment advisors believe that cybersecurity is a top priority investment for firms in 2020. 

Most business advisors agree that one of the biggest risk factors for tech companies is data breaches, ransomware, or DDoS attacks. Hence, 37% of participants named cybersecurity as one of the top priorities in their firm in 2020.

FBI estimates that in 2019, cyberattacks cost businesses $3.5 billion. Companies filled out 467,361 individual complaints in total regarding hacker invasions.

For companies that will increase their cybersecurity spending in 2020, even 83% of these will focus on cloud security. Also, 47% are planning significant increases in cloud security investments.

Threat intelligence and data privacy are trailing closely behind, with over 80% of executives naming them as the primary security focus in their firm. Even 40% of businesses will spend significantly more on data privacy in 2020 than the year before.

To read the full report, head over to: https://atlasvpn.com/blog/37-percent-of-businesses-expect-to-grow-by-investing-in-cybersecurity/

According to Atlas VPN research, cumulatively, scammers created over 35,500 unique websites related to COVID-19 in the last month. Here, they tried to swindle money via phishing scams or selling masks, hand-sanitizers, or even virus testing kits.

The report also shows that at least 2,000 websites related to COVID-19 are created daily, with half of them being scam. Amazon and Shopify are taking matters into their own hands, by removing misleading listings or shutting down suspicious e-shop sites. 

Meanwhile, Interpol announced receiving reports of losses as high as $100,000 per case. During March, the agency blocked 18 bank accounts and froze over $730,000 in fraudulent transactions.

Authorities in the UK also report significant cash losses of its citizens. Police identified 106 cases of fraud where Coronavirus was mentioned, with victim losses totaling over $1.2 million.

To read the full report, head over to: https://atlasvpn.com/blog/over-35500-coronavirus-related-websites-reported-as-scam/