Russian security firm Kaspersky has detected a fraudulent website impersonating the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) official website and tricking people seeking health advice during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The fake website deceives internet users into clicking harmful links as coronavirus-related health tips. The links were said to contain malware capable of stealing passwords and credit card data from users’ internet browsers and sending it to hackers.
“We are seeing a spread in COVID-19 messaging to trick people into opening malicious links or attachments and downloading malware,” according to the head of Kaspersky’s global research and analysis team, Yury Namestnikov, cited by the Daily Mail.
The style of malware used by the fake NHS site is known as a Trojan, for innocuous software that later reveals malicious affects. Trojans are reportedly attached to three hyperlinks on the website: ‘Advice about staying at home’, ‘Use the 111 Coronavirus service’ and ‘How to avoid infection’.
Earlier this week, Kaspersky CEO and founder, Eugene Kaspersky, said that a cyber-attack against the internet infrastructure of a hospital or a healthcare organisation during the ongoing COVID-19 global crisis should be considered a “terrorist attack”.
