More than a quarter of the events that the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) reacted to were connected to Covid, as per to its most recent annual report.
The analysis spans the duration from September 2019 to August 2020, with the pandemic occupying an even greater proportion of the Agency’s activities since the first lock-up began.
In general, there were 723 accidents of all sorts, an improvement of almost 10% over the previous period.
Of those, 194 were linked to Covid.
Any of the events related to the combating of nation-state threats, but many of them were of a criminal nature, the GCHQ Division reported.
It also announced that it had disrupted 15,354 efforts using coronavirus themes as a lure to trick people by clicking on a connect or clicking on a link comprising malicious software.
Any of them included bogus stores selling PPE ( personal protective equipment), test kits and even vaccines.
Hackers for Vaccine
The security of the NHS and health-related studies has been a priority, the study said.
In July, the United kingdom accused Russia of attempting to steal information linked to the vaccine through cyber-espionage.
And authorities said they expected to see “an ongoing threat” from states threatening the vaccination testing and distribution programme.
The NCSC reported that it had checked more than one million addresses of the GSP IP ( internet protocol) for vulnerabilities and shared 51,000 compromise indicators.
It also carried out “danger hunting” to check for safety hazards on connected devices and worked on the safety of the NHS Covid-19 contact-tracing software.
Aggressive Ransomware Attack
The NCSC also warned that ransomware attacks have become more common.
Ransomware locks users out of their computers and requires victims to make a ransom payment in order to restore access-and even then it is not always granted.
The NCSC said that it had treated more than 3 times as many ransomware attacks than in the previous year.
That included an assault on Redcar and the Cleveland Council, which, the authorities said, “has caused substantial harm and disruption.”
The study added that the NCSC noticed a rising trend that such attacks would be more targeted and violent than it was before.
Rather than simply lock users out of access to their data before ransom is charged, criminals also warned that they might shame victims if they failed to comply.
“We have seen the danger of data leakage,” said Paul Chichester, Director of Operations, to the BBC.
Examples included details of employee pay reported online.
This meant that the victims were at risk even though they backed up their data.
The NCSC, however, said that the United Kingdom did not seem to be as heavily attacked as other nations, since the British victims were less likely to pay the attackers.
Punch-Tape Substitution
The NCSC has also worked to increase the expertise and diversity of the cyber security sector.
It said nearly 12,000 girls had actually participated in the 2020 competition. However, last month’s launch of the government’s related CyberFirst programme was highly criticised for a ballerina and the slogan, “Fatima’s next job could be in cyber.”
The report also highlighted the role of the Agency in defending Parliament when it became “virtual” in avoiding the hacking of debates or votes.
And it emerged that the NCSC had just modified the cryptographic key development system, which encrypted classified military and government systems.
A new electronic system was implemented to change the previous-fashioned punch tape.
