The Communications Security Establishment (CSE) – the federal cybersecurity agency – is moving to shut down more than 1,000 “malicious imitation” websites that scam or misinform people about the government’s pandemic financial aid programs.
According to a May 26 report from the CSE, there have been multiple fake Government of Canada websites created in the last two months. Many of the fake websites pretend to be the Canada Revenue Agency, or claim to be related to the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB).
The fake websites attempt to trick visitors into divulging their personal financial information by “signing up” for the CERB. CTV News reported that the fake websites are some of the over 120,000 pandemic-related domains created in the last month alone that were discovered by the CSE.
“Canadian public health responses and initiatives are being repurposed by state-sponsored cyber threat actors and cybercriminals as COVID-19 lures for the purpose of targeting Canadians and Canadian organizations,” the agency’s report said.
Some malicious cyber actors have also turned to phishing, tricking victims into clicking links that download malware that could steal personal information from computers, the CSE found in its report.
Last month, the CSE warned that some Canadian organizations involved in COVID-19 research have suffered potential security breaches. The agency confirmed that it has been working with the affected organizations to determine if the security breaches were malicious in nature.
