Characterizing the Landscape of COVID-19 Themed Cyberattacks and Defenses

Abstract

COVID-19 (Coronavirus) hit the global society and economy with a big surprise. In particular, work-from-home has become a new norm for employees. Despite the fact that COVID-19 can equally attack innocent people and cyber criminals, it is ironic to see surges in cyberattacks leveraging COVID-19 as a theme, dubbed COVID-19 themed cyberattacks or COVID-19 attacks for short, which represent a new phenomenon that has yet to be systematically understood. In this paper, we make a first step towards fully characterizing the landscape of these attacks, including their sophistication via the Cyber Kill Chain model. We also explore the solution space of defenses against these attacks.