As we previously detailed, the coronavirus
pandemic has expanded opportunities for nefarious actors to exploit
the digital vulnerabilities of individuals, local governments,
industries, organizations, and essential services as they rapidly
adapt to the public health crisis. Recent reports have confirmed
that attacks and cyber scams associated with the pandemic are in
fact on the rise.
On May 4, a new report released by Palo Alto
Networks underscored the seriousness of these threats. Palo
Alto reviewers searched for domain names using the keywords
"coronav, covid, ncov, pandemic, vaccine and virus," and
found approximately 1.2 million new domain names that have been
registered in the past few months. On average, 1,761 new malicious
or high-risk COVID-19 related domains were created daily, with the
United States hosting the vast majority of them. According to the
report, 86,607 of those domain names were deemed high-risk or
malicious. Of those names, 2,829 were
