The coronavirus has turned our everyday lives upside down, and society has found itself in an extraordinary situation. The inherent uncertainty has meant that people need more information and protection, not to mention new working conditions – and criminals are cleverly exploiting this situation. When the lockdown hit, the internet all of a sudden became the virtual solution to almost everything. As the registry for .ch domains, the IT infrastructure provider for universities and a multi-sector CERT, SWITCH has a good overview of the cybercrime occurring in the shadow of the rapid rise of the digital economy.

[…] One development that could be established, though, was a rise in the number of phishing attacks on Swiss internet users working from home. The fact that people are working outside the largely protected network at their regular place of work has only made these attacks easier to carry out. The attacks that SWITCH-CERT has observed were deliberately aimed at higher education staff and users of Swiss IT service providers such as web hosting services. Fraudsters then often abused the web hosting access credentials they got their hands on to host additional phishing sites on the existing domain names and web servers. Fortunately, these compromises were identified and eliminated quickly. Various hosts have warned their customers of the attacks, and MELANI (the Reporting and Analysis Centre for Information Assurance) has also reported a spike in phishing activities.

[…] The rise in cybercrime connected with the coronavirus pandemic highlights yet again just how fragile the internet infrastructure really is. Applying security standards such as DMARC and DNSSEC should therefore be given urgent priority to strengthen digital Switzerland’s resilience for the future and thus make it more difficult for scammers to carry out image-damaging cyber attacks.

Source and full article : Switch