IT Security Alert

Recently, malicious cyber threat actors have been leveraging the current news cycle to launch coronavirus themed cyberattacks at their targets. Prominent news reporting and the resulting elevated concern for the coronavirus issue is being used as context for a malicious email phishing campaign. The phishing emails contain links to malware that is frequently used to target health care organizations and their IT systems.

Here are two examples of email language being used by bad actors:

Example 1

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continues to closely monitor an outbreak of a 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China that began in December 2019. CDC has established an Incident Management System to coordinate a domestic and international public health response.

Updated list of new cases around your city are available at [bogus link to CDC]

You are immediately advised to go through the cases above for safety hazard.

Sincerely,
CDC-INFO National Contact Center
National Center for Health Marketing
Division of eHealth Marketing
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

 

Example 2

Due to the coronavirus outbreak [company name] is actively taking safety precautions by instituting a Communicable Disease Management Policy. This policy is part of our organizational preparedness and we require all employees to read and acknowledge the policy [bogus link] before [current date].

If you have any questions or concerns regarding the policy, please contact Human Resources.

Regards,
Human Resources

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Best Practices

Remember, email from outside UM is conspicuously flagged with [External] in the subject line as an indicator to pause and review the sender and text carefully.

Please forward any suspicious email to abuse@olemiss.edu. Then delete the email from your Inbox.

If you have questions or concerns, please contact the IT Helpdesk by phone (662-915-5222), email (helpdesk@olemiss.edu), or via the Helpdesk website.

Thank you.
Information Technology Security