VIT Bhopal University’s initiative against COVID-19 themed Cyber Threats

The spread of deadly novel coronavirus COVID -19 is on a steep rise. Capitalizing this scenario, cyber criminals are gearing up with uniquely designed activities and attacks in the name of COVID -19 for their own malicious interest. Setting up warrantable looking websites to impersonate official sites and spreading false information online, scamming common public for money or resources is their main motto. It becomes mandatory for all the netizens to have an eagle eye on all the suspicious mails they receive.

To safeguard the netizens from the risk of being impacted by these malwares, the Cyber Security & Digital Forensics Division of VIT Bhopal University is closely working with the Police Academy Bhopal in the area of cyber security. The department has released an advisory which consists of major cyber-attack cases based on the theme of this pandemic along with the precautionary measures to avoid them. 

The advisory was released as an initiative and issued in the public interest by IPS Dr. Maithili Sharan Gupta (DGP, Police Reforms, M.P) and Dr. Shishir Kumar Shandilya, Division Head of Cyber Security & Digital Forensic at VIT Bhopal University, along with a team of B.Tech Cyber Security 2nd year students of VIT Bhopal University. The team is continuously working on the identification of COVID-19 related malwares and malicious websites as the hackers are also trying to find out new ways to target the innocent people who are already facing difficult times due to this pandemic. Dr. Shandilya informed that VIT Bhopal University will soon release its next version also, as these types of attacks are becoming much more organized than ever.