By Nikhil Taneja

Coronavirus is a pandemic that the world has not witnessed in quite some time. International borders are closed. Major sports leagues have suspended their games. Employers have asked their workers to work from home. Normal life has been upended and will remain so for the foreseeable future, as the world struggles to get ahead of the deadly COVID-19 virus.

As the information on the novel virus deluges WhatsApp inboxes and social media feeds, the WHO recently warned of a different type of outbreak in regard to coronavirus: the overabundance of information makes it difficult for people to differentiate between legitimate news and misleading informationwhich could be disastrous. EU security services have also warned that Russia is aggressively exploiting the coronavirus pandemic to push disinformation and weaken Western society using its bot army.

An Infodemic

Regular monitoring of internet traffic is being processed by bot managers to track the infodemic that WHO and the EU security services have warned of. Data shows that bots have upped their game. Organizations from social media, e-commerce, and digital publishing industries have witnessed an unexpected surge in bad bot traffic after the rise of the coronavirus pandemic. These bots were involved in executing various insidious activities, including spreading disinformation, spam commenting, etc.

IT was also found earlier this year that nearly 60% of bots could mimic human behavior. This means they can disguise their identity and can create fake accounts on social media sites to post their masters propaganda as a genuine user. With such advanced bots, spreading disinformation becomes easy for countries such as Russia.

Gaining from the pandemic is not limited to Russia and social media. Given the attention that the coronavirus keyword is receiving, cybercriminals and scammers are more vigilant than ever to profit. For example, our research shows there has been an exponential rise in automated attacks on e-commerce and media industry as well. Lets take a detailed look at it.

Coronavirus Related Articles being scraped by Cybercriminals

Malicious actors are always in search of opportunities to scam people. So much so, they wont let go of any significant event, whether its a natural calamity, a pandemic, or a celebration.

Coronavirus is, in this respect, no different than other events. Fear and a continuous need for latest news provide an excellent breeding ground for automated attacks. A lot of phishing campaigns on the internet today are aimed at luring people with the promise of essential or breaking news on COVID-19, enticing them to click on malicious links or open infected attachments.

Research also suggests that cybercriminals are targeting media and digital publishing sites to scrape their unique content, publish scraped content on malware-ridden shady websites, and scam visitors. Over one-fourth of traffic on media sites was bad bot involved in automated activity, including scraping in February.

Search for Sanitizers and Face Masks by Bots

Bots quest to gain from the coronavirus pandemic doesnt end with media sites; they are also targeting e-commerce websites. With around one-third of traffic comprised of bad bots, e-commerce was the second most targeted industry by bad bots in February alone. The sector witnessed an unexpected surge in bad bot traffic after the rise of the coronavirus pandemic.

Lets take a detailed look at how cybercriminals are targeting e-commerce firms through a real-world case study. We monitored the traffic of a top European e-commerce site that has hand sanitizers and face masks listed on its portal. As coronavirus fear increases, bots ramp up their search for face masks and sanitizers.

These automated attacks could be aimed at performing denial of inventory attacks, hoarding these essential products to sell in black markets, or even scraping product details to list similar products on malware-ridden sites to scam people.

As the coronavirus threat intensifies, bots will drive the infodemic much further, continuing to be an efficient tool for cybercriminals, nation-state actors, and conspiracy theorists alike. The impact of information true or false especially in times of fear, uncertainty and confusion is greater. Because communication channels are diverse, authorities have very little control of Bot activity. In the coming months, we expect the use of bots to accelerate due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the US presidential election.

(The author is Managing Director-India, SAARC & Middle East, Radware)

Read more:
Are Bots Exploiting Coronavirus Fears? - CXOToday.com