Have You Been a Victim of COVID-19-Related Cyber Incidents? Survey, Taxonomy, and Mitigation Strategies

Saqib Hakak; Wazir Zada Khan; Muhammad Imran; Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo; Muhammad Shoaib

doi:10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3006172

Have You Been a Victim of COVID-19-Related Cyber Incidents? Survey, Taxonomy, and Mitigation Strategies

IEEE Access. 2020 Jun 30:8:124134-124144. doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3006172. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Saqib Hakak¹, Wazir Zada Khan², Muhammad Imran³, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo⁴, Muhammad Shoaib⁵

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Computer ScienceUniversity of Northern British ColumbiaPrince GeorgeBCV2N 4Z9Canada.
² Faculty of CS & ISJazan UniversityJazan45142Saudi Arabia.
³ College of Applied Computer ScienceKing Saud UniversityRiyadh11451Saudi Arabia.
⁴ Department of Information Systems and Cyber SecurityThe University of Texas at San AntonioSan AntonioTX78249USA.
⁵ College of Computer and Information SciencesKing Saud UniversityRiyadh11451Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

Cybercriminals are constantly on the lookout for new attack vectors, and the recent COVID-19 pandemic is no exception. For example, social distancing measures have resulted in travel bans, lockdowns, and stay-at-home orders, consequently increasing the reliance on information and communications technologies, such as Zoom. Cybercriminals have also attempted to exploit the pandemic to facilitate a broad range of malicious activities, such as attempting to take over videoconferencing platforms used in online meetings/educational activities, information theft, and other fraudulent activities. This study briefly reviews some of the malicious cyber activities associated with COVID-19 and the potential mitigation solutions. We also propose an attack taxonomy, which (optimistically) will help guide future risk management and mitigation responses.

Keywords: COVID-19; cyberattacks; mitigation; potential solutions; security and privacy; taxonomy.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Grants and funding

This work was supported in part by the University of Northern British Columbia under Grant FUND 15021 ORG 4460, and in part by the Deanship of Scientific Research (DSR) at King Saud University through research group project under Grant RG-1439-036.