The First Secretary of State has warned the public that there are ‘malicious’ hackers seeking to take advantage of the coronavirus crisis.

Speaking at today’s press conference, Dominic Raab said that while the ‘vast majority’ of people had ‘come together’ amid the pandemic, there would ‘always be some who seek to exploit a crisis for their own criminal and hostile ends’.

He continued: ‘We know that cyber criminals and other malicious groups are targeting individuals, businesses and other organisations by deploying Covid-19 related scams and fishing emails.’

Raab went on to say that this includes ‘persistent threat groups’ which are made up of ‘sophisticated networks of hackers who try to breach computers systems’.

Coronavirus updates

Visit our live blog for the latest updates: Coronavirus news live

He stated that there was evidence they had been ‘actively targeting’ national and international organisations responding to the pandemic. He added: ‘This, I have to say, makes them particularly dangerous and venal at this time.’

Raab said: ‘Our teams have identified campaigns targeting healthcare bodies, pharmaceutical companies, research organisations and also various different arms of local government.

‘There are various objectives and motivations that lie behind these attacks from fraud on the one hand to espionage, but they tend to be designed to steal bulk personal data, intellectual property and wider information that supports those aims and they’re often linked with other state actors.’

‘We expect this kind of predatory, criminal behaviour to continue and to evolve over the coming weeks and months ahead and we’re taking a range of measures to tackle that threat.’

The Foreign Secretary confirmed that the government is currently working with ‘targets of those attacks’ and potential targets in the future to make sure they they are ‘aware of the cyber threat’ and able to protect themselves.

He announced that the UK’s national cybersecurity centre and the US cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency have now published a joint warning about the threat from these groups.

He said: ‘Preventative action is often the very best way to deny attackers the opportunities that they’re looking for. The National Cyber Security Centre offers a range of practical advice to safeguard against cyber-attacks from things like the use of online passwords to guidance on what are the trusted sources of online information related to Covid-19.’

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected].

For more stories like this, check our news page.

Source: Read Full Article