Online Phishing During Crises

Remarkably, attempts to penetrate privacy and personal and official accounts increase dramatically when a crisis occurs, as an example, the crisis of the spread of the Coronavirus has led to some countries having to take different measures to limit its spread, including suspending studies in schools, institutes and universities, and diverging social, closing commercial centers, and stopping the work of buses and trains, and these measures may reach the imposition of a partial or comprehensive curfew, which has resulted in many educational institutions working remotely; through websites or applications via the Internet. Also, many educational institutions have resorted to activating learning remotely applications to maintain the sustainability of the teaching and learning process that cannot be dispensed with, as it comes third after security and health.

Working and learning remotely have led to a significant increase in e-mail communication and various communication sites, this situation is a very fertile and ideal environment for online phishing operations based on cunning and deception by hackers, who are given the opportunity to hunt their prey. The aim of online phishing is mainly intended to penetrate accounts and privacy, by publishing titles and information that are attractive and provocative, which are related to the current reality imposed by the crisis, for example, the following hypothetical titles: (Scientists found an effective vaccine for the Coronavirus), (Do Free courses with an accredited certificate in working remotely skills), (The best free applications for learning remotely), (Assistant teacher application for learning remotely all subjects), (If you are looking for success and achieving the highest score, join us for free to easily get what you want ).

Often these titles and information are malicious links, which lead to penetration operations, which the user may not feel, that it remains hidden in the background of the user's usual actions, and soon or later this penetration will used to blackmail, defamation, or the implementation of demands, and may damage even reach much more than that; when your account penetration becomes a gateway to other accounts penetration; like the accounts of your friends, colleagues, school or institution, or perhaps worse if the government accounts in your country are accessed through of your account penetration; yes, don’t be surprised, and don’t exclude it, for example: if you are a student, teacher or employee of a government school, and you have an official email account linked to your school or the Ministry of Education accounts in your country, there is a real opportunity for a hacker to do a search for vulnerabilities through your account to access other accounts.

This is undoubtedly very dangerous; it is imperative to take all precautions and procedures, you should be extremely careful with it; hence, the student, teacher, father, mother, and employee to other sectors of society must be fully aware of their responsibility towards that, and have sufficient awareness on how to confront such attempts, take all precautions and measures to prevent this penetration and miss the opportunity for these opportunistic hackers to gain access to their accounts or other related accounts.

Hence, and in particular, the role of the teacher, school, and parents is highlighted in awareness-raising and follow-up processes continuously through publishing and passing awareness messages about the need to obtain information from its official and reliable sources and other messages like, in addition to raising awareness of the severe risks that can be exposed as a result of this, and its negative effects and possibly destructive at personal or community levels, or perhaps higher levels than that, this can be done through printed brochures which can distributed directly to students, or published inside their classes, school corridors and the school cafeteria, or through video clips, and presentations E-brochures which can posted on the school's website, or its accounts on social media or via learning remotely applications, or through live classroom discussions in classes, virtualization via online, or by talking to family members during family sessions at home, during a car tour, or when outing… etc.