but unfortunately there's more to worry about

than just a global pandemic.

New warning from the FBI about coronavirus scams.

Scams related to the coronavirus.

Stealing sensitive personal information.

It could infect your computer.

Any time there's a global event,

hackers like to weaponize it.

So whether it's the Olympics or an election

or a global pandemic,

hackers are trying to leverage whatever the situation is

against users.

I have an old email address

with a pretty good spam filter

and it's just inundated with spam mail

claiming to be everything from the World Health Organization

to COVID-19 vaccines.

Now I'm not gonna take the bait

but believe it or not,

a lot of people will.

It is working that is why

hackers and criminal attackers continue to use it.

Now I don't need to tell you.

Well, maybe I should.

Don't click a link, don't open attachments.

Just delete it.

But for many, that's easier said than done.

Phishing emails have quadrupled

since the coronavirus outbreak.

It's gotten so bad that both the U.S. and the U.K.

Have issued joint warnings about the schemes.

So why have all these phishing schemes

pivoted to coronavirus practically overnight?

So a successful phishing campaign,

it has to be interesting

and it has to sort of look reliable.

On one hand, they want this email to look like

something you're gonna get anyway

but they also want it to grab people's attention

to say Oh I need to click on this urgently

and the coronavirus stuff really fits both of those things.

People are getting an incredible amount of email about it

but it's also a place where people have a lot of hunger

for new information.

But there's one ingredient that COVID-19 pandemic

offers hackers that say a Nigerian prince never could.

Fear.

It is scary.

Millions who are scared right now.

I am just afraid of this week.

The idea behind these schemes is that in times of crisis

or uncertainty or fear,

people just let their guards down.

So in cases where you know something is promised,

maybe people are distracted and not as focused on

who might be sending something.

Or in cases where a hacker is promising information,

when we're scared, we might be more likely to click on it

without thinking twice about who it might be coming from.

On top of the fear-based COVID-19 schemes,

hackers have seized on one of their tried and true lures,

money.

The prospect of a payout from the two trillion dollars

stimulus package in the U.S.

comes with the subject line saying

COVID-19 payment.

Again, delete it.

So it's important to understand who these hackers are

and despite all the stock footage ever made about hackers,

they're not necessarily some shady dude in a hoodie.

These are folks that aren't out

to sort of make a quick buck.

Some of these groups can make

hundreds of millions of dollars in a year

and sort of have the investments

to sort of use that money to reinvest

in sort of grow big capabilities.

Cybersecurity data suggests

that many of these hacking operations

are backed by major nation states.

So we've seen multiple state-sponsored

cyber espionage actors who use coronavirus as a lure.

We've seen North Korea, China and Russia

all employ it to try to compromise their victims.

And it doesn't stop at spam mail.

Fake social media accounts are spreading disinformation

about the coronavirus that back the interest

of countries like China and Russia.

According to the U.S. State Department,

Russia has put forth its entire disinformation apparatus

to spread disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic.

So this includes websites, conventional media

and also they stay swarms of bots on social media platforms

that are doing the work of amplifying

or spreading messages that are false related to the pandemic

Russia's motivation is to sow discord and distrust

and are leveraging the pandemic to create

a lot of fear and uncertainty

and make people doubt healthcare institutions.

Just because the 2016 election came to an end

doesn't mean that disinformation campaigns

from nation state actors and criminal actors

didn't come to an end.

So we are seeing bot nets from Russia, from Iran,

from China,

perfectly willing and capable

of creating chaos through misinformation.

And unfortunately, it kind of gets worse

because hospitals and medical institutions

are a favorite target for hackers.

What they will do is hit a target with ransomware

which is an attack that uses malware

to encrypt or lock down data belonging to an organization.

And they'll charge a ransom for the decryption of that data.

And from a criminal perspective,

those attacks might be more successful

during a time when healthcare institutions are so important.

There is increased targeting on medical facilities,

hospitals, testing centers, primary care physicians

because they are so dire, so desperate

to keep their operations up.

If they shut down, there are lives at stake.

Just as we must band together

to defeat the COVID-19 pandemic,

we must also be vigilant against the people and nations

shamelessly trying to capitalize on these trying times.

In terms of disinformation campaigns,

it's important to think about

who you're receiving information from,

trusting official sources and not believing

everything that's on social media about the pandemic.

Instead, going to trusted news outlets.

Always be on the lookout to communication

that you don't normally get.

Sort of the ways to check that you can double check

who the sender is from,

making sure they're exactly sort of who you're expecting.

Just opening and looking at an email

in your Gmail browser is

it's gonna be very unlikely to infect you.

But your risk increases a lot when you open an attachment

or click on a link.

So you can generally read an email and be okay

but be very wary of attachments or links

especially if they're unexpected.

So while we all understand the temptation to click,

out of fear or even greed,

please do yourself a favor and just delete it.