Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cybercrime

Top UN Official Warns Malicious Emails on Rise in Pandemic

The U.N. disarmament chief warned Friday that cyber crime is on the rise, with a 600% increase in malicious emails during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The U.N. disarmament chief warned Friday that cyber crime is on the rise, with a 600% increase in malicious emails during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Izumi Nakamitsu told an informal meeting of the U.N. Security Council that the coronavirus crisis is moving the world toward increased technological innovation and online collaboration. But she said “there have also been worrying reports of (cyber) attacks against health care organizations and medical research facilities worldwide.”

The high representative for disarmament affairs said growing digital dependency has increased the vulnerability to cyberattacks, and it is estimated that one such attack takes place every 39 seconds.

According to the International Telecommunication Union, she said, nearly 90 countries are still only at the early stages of making commitments to cybersecurity.

Nakamitsu said the threat from misusing information and communications technology “is urgent.”

But she said there is also good news, pointing to some global progress at the United Nations to address the threats by a group of government expert who developed 11 voluntary non-binding norms of responsible state behavior in the use of such technology.

Estonia’s Prime Minister Juri Ratas, whose country holds the Security Council presidency and organized Friday’s meeting, said the need for “a secure and functioning cyberspace” is more pressing than ever. He condemned cyberattacks targeting hospitals, medical research facilities and other infrastructure, especially during the pandemic.

“Those attacks are unacceptable,” Ratas said. “It will be important to hold the offenders responsible for their behavior.”

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

Russia did not attend the informal council meeting broadcast online, which was the centerpiece of Estonia’s council presidency. The other 14 council nations did, along with about 50 other nations that spoke.

Russia’s U.N. Mission said in a statement on its website that it did not attend because Estonia, the U.K. and the U.S. violated “the established practice” that all council members attend informal meetings “regardless of whether they approve or disapprove its topic.”

The three countries did not attend a Russian-sponsored informal meeting on Crimea on Thursday. All three oppose Russia’s seizure and annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

In March, the U.S., U.K., and Estonia accused Russia’s military intelligence of conducting cyberattacks against the government and media websites in Georgia, calling the attacks part of “a continuing pattern of reckless … cyberoperations against a number of countries” that “clearly contradict Russia’s attempts to claim it is a responsible actor in cyberspace.”

Estonia was the target of a massive three-week cyberattack during a dispute with Russia in 2007 over Estonia’s removal of the Bronze Soldier Soviet war memorial from the center of the capital, Tallinn. The attack disabled the websites of government ministries, political parties, newspapers, banks and companies.

Since then, Estonia has built its cyber defenses and become one of the most wired societies in Europe and a pioneer in the development of “e-government.” Being highly dependent on computers, it is also highly vulnerable to cyberattack.

Russia has taken on the issue of cybercrime at the United Nations, and won General Assembly approval in December for a resolution that will start the process of drafting a new international treaty to combat cybercrime over objections from the European Union, the U.S. and others. They said it would undermine international cooperation to combat cybercrime.

“We have witnessed malicious cyber activity that appears designed to undermine the United States and our international partners’ efforts to protect, assist, and inform the public during this global pandemic,” Acting U.S. Deputy Ambassador Cherith Norman Chalet told Friday’s meeting.

She warned that actions hampering hospital and health care systems that perform critical services “could have deadly results.”

Russia’s U.N. Mission posted the speech it would have delivered at the council meeting, which says “the world literally finds itself now before a choice between global cyber peace or cyberwarfare.”

Russia said the COVID-19 pandemic introduced dramatic changes to people’s lives and showed that the world’s dependence on information and telecommunication technologies “is now unprecedented.”

Moscow accused an “`elite’ minority,” whose members it did not identify, of actively pursuing “the militarization of cyberspace by pushing forward the concept of `preventive military cyber strikes,’ including against critical infrastructure.”

Related: Criminals Quick to Exploit COVID-19 Crisis in Europe

Related: Google Sees Millions of COVID-19-Related Malicious Emails Daily

Related: EU Demands End to Coronavirus Cyberattacks

Written By

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Cybercrime

As it evolves, web3 will contain and increase all the security issues of web2 – and perhaps add a few more.

Cybercrime

Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus Group informed some customers last week that their online accounts had been breached by hackers.

Cybercrime

Zendesk is informing customers about a data breach that started with an SMS phishing campaign targeting the company’s employees.

Cybercrime

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft calls attention to a series of zero-day remote code execution attacks hitting its Office productivity suite.

Artificial Intelligence

The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 has demonstrated the potential of AI for both good and bad.

Cybercrime

Satellite TV giant Dish Network confirmed that a recent outage was the result of a cyberattack and admitted that data was stolen.