The coronavirus outbreak has become a worldwide ‘threat’ with WHO also declaring public health emergency in the wake of the virus outbreak in China.
However, before you open the next forwarded file or a document related to the Coronavirus outbreak be very careful as you could possibly receive Malware or even Trojans that are now widely circulated on social media.
The virus outbreak in China has reached emergency status, with authorities and organizations alike imposing conveyance barricades, devising remote treatment terminals and attempts to contain the outbreak.
Surprisingly, a report by cybersecurity firm Kaspersky has revealed these files are actually Trojans and malware, masked in lieu of the headlining topic.
Kaspersky Malware analyst Anton Ivanov stated, “The coronavirus, which is being widely discussed as a major news story, has already been used as bait by cybercriminals. So far we have seen only 10 unique files, but as this sort of activity often happens with popular media topics then we expect that this tendency may grow. As people continue to be worried for their health, we may see more and more malware hidden inside fake documents about the coronavirus being spread.”
Under the guise of Coronavirus, the files can be Trojans, ransomware and other malicious worms.
These are capable of blocking a device, copying or modifying the data on a device or even stealing the user’s data.
Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky has pinned down the most popular malware files being used by hackers globally. You
You should be watching out for these —
Worm.VBS.Dinihou.r, Worm.Python.Agent.c, UDS:DangerousObject.Multi.Generic, Trojan.WinLNK.Agent.gg, Trojan.WinLNK.Agent.ew, HEUR:Trojan.WinLNK.Agent.gen, and HEUR:Trojan.PDF.Badur.b.
However, given that such file names can not be identified for the common user. What you should look out for is whether a file shared with you is a disguised word document, PDF or video and has either of .EXE or .LNK extensions at the end of their names.