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Easy money pandemic: Welfare as bait
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[Image: covid-compensation-spam-usd.jpg]

As governments worldwide implement support measures for pandemic-hit citizens and businesses, online scammers strive to cash in.

The coronavirus pandemic has dealt a major blow to the global economy. Restrictive measures have forced many companies to suspend operations, and workers to take time off at their own expense. Attempting to mitigate the effects of the pandemic, governments worldwide are taking steps to support businesses and citizens through tax breaks, compensation schemes, stimulus checks, and the like.

In other words, money almost literally falling from the sky doesn’t necessarily sound like fantasy this year. However, if you receive an e-mail stating that you can claim a tidy sum as some sort of pandemic-related relief, don’t rush to celebrate. Governments are not the only ones promising financial aid. So too are fraudsters, but as you can guess, their promises lead to the opposite. Here are some examples of “support” that you definitely don’t want.

Free malware for everyone

A lot of spam these days uses pandemic-related payouts as bait to distribute malware. You might be asked to open an attachment or click on a link in the message to get at the promised funds.

For example, scammers targeting users in Brazil claim that the government has abolished electricity payments because of the pandemic. You can’t simply stop paying, though; first, you must register online using the link conveniently provided in the message.

Although the link seems to point to a government website, the e-mail sender’s address looks anything but official. If the recipient fails to smell the rat and clicks through, then Trojan loader Sneaky (our products identify it as Trojan-Downloader.OLE2.Sneaky.gen) is installed on the computer, and it then downloads and runs another Trojan.

In another e-mail, cybercriminals preying on users in South Africa promise to pay compensation all summer — provided they fill out the attached form. The “form” turns out to be the SelfDel backdoor (Trojan.Win32.SelfDel.hoxq), which gives the attackers remote control over the victim’s computer.

Scammers are also adept at imitating banks. Clients of one financial institution, for example, are prompted not only to open an attached archive supposedly with confirmation of the payout, but to log in to their account to check the transaction details. The real reason is so that the Noon Trojan (Trojan-Spy.MSIL.Noon.gen), concealed in the archive, can steal the username and password when the user rushes to log in to their bank account.

Good old phishing

Passwords and other data are sometimes easy to coax out of users without the help of malware. For example, we were struck by a “government” e-mail offering compensation to those aged 70 and up. This social group tends to be more susceptible to fraud than young people because many aren’t as well-versed in modern technology.

In addition, COVID-19 poses a greater health risk to older people, which is why in many countries they actually receive more subsidies than other age groups.

The regrettable result is an almost perfect target. In this scam, the addressee is asked to fill out a form by clicking a link.
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