Table 3.

A Summary of Monthly Cyber-attacks during the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Date	Country	Type of attack	Attack details
February 2020	United States of America	Phishing	On February 12, 2020, Puerto Rico revealed that a firm it owned had fallen prey to a phishing scam in a plot to steal $4 million.
February 2020	United States of America	Phishing	In February 2020, the personal information of 10.6 million MGM Resorts guests was hacked on a cyber-attacks forum. This included information such as tourists' names, phone numbers, addresses, email addresses, and birth dates as well as those of tech CEOs, celebrities, and government employees.
February 2020	United States of America	DDoS	Amazon detailed the attack in its first-quarter 2020 threat report, stating that it happened in the month of February (Musotto and Wall, 2020).
February 2020	China	DoS	DoS on COVID-19 epidemic prevention units (Lallie et al., 2021).
February 2020	Singapore	Phishing	Phishing cyber-criminals steals email log-in username, passwords and credentials (Pras, 2021, Kaspersky, 2020).
February 2020	Japan	Phishing /Malware	Safety measures phishing cyber-attack shares emotet malware (Walter, 2020).
March 2020	France	DDoS	The devices of a group of hospitals in Paris that play a key role in combating the COVID-19 crisis in the capital were the target of DDoS attacks that impacted access to computers and email (Pranggono and Arabo, 2021).
March 2020	Italy	Malware	Distribution of Trickbot Malware through email (Zahra et al., 2021).
March 2020	United Kingdom	Ransomware	The Maze ransomware group has leaked the medical and personal information of thousands of former patients of a London-based medical research firm that offers COVID-19 testing (Tuttle, 2021).
March 2020	United Kingdom	Phishing	It was a free school meal deceptive short message service that directed the recipient to the website that stole payment credentials (Sultana and Jilani, 2021).
March 2020	Czech Republic	Ransomware	The Brno University Hospital, one of the country's COVID-19 testing laboratories, was impacted by a cyber-attack and then was forced to shut down its whole information technology network (Kolouch et al., 2022).
March 2020	Vietnam	Malware	LOKIBOT malware spread through email, purporting incorrect invoice payments (Zahra et al., 2021).
March 2020	Spain	Ransomware	It was a disguised email Netwalker ransomware attack that advised people on the use of restroom use (Lallie et al., 2021).
March 2020	China Mongolia	Malware	Chinese hackers were suspected of spreading the Vicious Panda virus to Mongolia using emails ostensibly from Mongolia's ministry of foreign affairs (Lallie et al., 2021, Smzdm.com, 2020).
March 2020	United States of America	DDoS	United States Department of Health and Human Services, that is deeply involved in the COVID-19 issue, was the victim of a DDoS attack (Lallie et al., 2021).
March 2020	Libya	Malware	Exfiltration of user’s data using SpyMax malware through trojanized app (Rosso, 2020).
March 2020	Phillipines	Malware	It was a REMCOS malware communicated on the Internet in the Philippines at the early stage of lockdown (Zahra et al., 2021).
April 2020	Worldwide	DDoS	Credentials of World Health Organization Officials were Leaked (Khan et al., 2020; Ahmad, 2020).
March 2020	United States of America	Malware	It was SMS that requested the recipient to take the COVID-19 preparation test to specific a website that downloads malware into a victim system (Sultana and Jilani, 2021).
April 2020	China	Phishing	Vietnam has been accused of conducting a METALJACK phishing attack against Wuhan district offices (Särökaari, 2020).
April 2020	United States of America	Phishing	Zoom was subjected to a severe cyber-attack in San Jose, California. Zoom Video Communications were the most talked-about cybersecurity issue in April 2020, just as the video meeting software has become a critical tool for daily business activities all over industries (Khan et al., 2020).
April 2020	United States of America	Phishing	Magellan Health has been a victim of phishing. Over a five-day period, attackers got access to an organization server containing highly sensitive employee data.
April 2020	United States of America	Ransomware	A Maze hacking incident attacked cognizant information technology solutions company on April 18, 2020, which hindered the service online for some customers.
May 2020	Taiwan	Phishing	Emails revealed an unauthorized connection hacking tool that impersonated Taiwan's top infection-disease official and urged recipients to go and get coronavirus tests (Chigada andMadzinga, 2021).
Phishing	UK	Phishing	People were directed to a counterfeit track and trace website that gathered the credentials of the victim (Mertoiu and Mesnita, 2021).
May 2020	Japan	Undisclosed but suspected to be DDoS	On May 7, Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT), Japan's largest firm and one of the largest in the world, was the victim of one of the most recent cyberattacks. Until May 11, the attack on the Firm went unnoticed.
May 2020	Nigeria	Undisclosed but suspected to be DDoS and unknown scammers.	Scammers pose as real and well-known organizations such as banks, travel agencies, insurance providers, and telecommunications companies, and use various excuses around COVID-19 to: •Ask for individuals' personal and financial information. •Trick them into opening malicious links or attachments. •Gain remote access to their computer. •Demand payment for a spurious service or something they did not purchase. •Divert individuals' regular account payments to different bank accounts. Scammers have set up fictitious online stores claiming to sell products that do not exist, such as COVID-19 cures or vaccinations and face masks.
May 2020	United States of America	Ransomware	A group of hackers known as “Maze” stole and published sensitive data from the Asheville Plastic Surgery Institute, as well as a similar volume of information from a plastic surgeon in Washington state. Patient names, birthdays, insurance information, order forms, and before-and-after photos are among the information contained in the database.
June 2020	United States of America	Ransomware	The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), which had been working on the COVID-19 vaccine, was indeed the victim of a ransomware attack and was compelled to pay $1.14 million to malicious actors known as Netwalker (Pranggono and Arabo, 2021).
June 2020	Canada	Ransomware	On an Android smartphone, Crycryptor ransomware masquerades as COVID-19 contact-tracing apps (Sun et al., 2021).
June 2020	Germany	Phishing	Phishing emails were sent to senior executives at a firm that handles personal protective equipment (PPE). The phishing links take executives to bogus Microsoft login pages to steal their login information (Ramadan et al., 2021).
June 2020	Worldwide	Botnet	In the COVID-19 era, coming across a bot account while browsing through Twitter is more likely. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University revealed that most of the discussion surrounding the covid-19 pandemic and stay-at-home authorizations is fueled by propaganda and misinformation that use plausible botnet (Dornan, 2020)
July 2020	United States of America	Phishing	The social media platform was hacked, and hackers verified the Twitter accounts of high-profile US figures such as Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Joseph R. Biden Jr., Bill Gates, and others (Aslan et al., 2020).