PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
To design preventive policy measures for email phishing, it is helpful to be aware of the phishing schemes and trends that are currently applied. How phishing schemes and patterns emerge and adapt is an ongoing field of study. Existing phishing works already reveal a rich set of phishing schemes, patterns, and trends that provide insight into the mechanisms used. However, there seems to be limited knowledge about how email phishing is affected in periods of social disturbance, such as COVID-19 in which phishing numbers have quadrupled. Therefore, we investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic influences the phishing emails sent during the first year of the pandemic. The email content (header data and html body, excl. attachments) is evaluated to assess how the pandemic influences the topics of phishing emails over time (peaks and trends), whether email campaigns correlate with momentous events and trends of the COVID-19 pandemic, and what hidden content revealed. This is studied through an in-depth analysis of the body of 500.000 phishing emails addressed to Dutch registered top-level domains collected during the start of the pandemic. The study reveals that most COVID-19 related phishing emails follow known patterns indicating that perpetrators are more likely to adapt than to reinvent their schemes.
摘要：
要设计针对电子邮件网络钓鱼的预防政策措施，了解当前应用的网络钓鱼方案和趋势是有帮助的。网络钓鱼方案和模式如何出现和适应是一个正在进行的研究领域。现有的网络钓鱼作品已经揭示了一套丰富的网络钓鱼方案，模式,以及提供对所用机制的洞察的趋势。然而,关于电子邮件网络钓鱼在社交干扰期间如何受到影响的知识似乎有限，例如COVID-19，其中网络钓鱼数量翻了两番。因此,我们调查了COVID-19大流行如何影响大流行第一年发送的网络钓鱼电子邮件。电子邮件内容（标题数据和html正文，不包括.附件)进行评估，以评估大流行随着时间的推移如何影响网络钓鱼电子邮件的主题(峰值和趋势)，电子邮件活动是否与COVID-19大流行的重大事件和趋势相关，以及隐藏的内容揭示了什么。这是通过对在大流行开始期间收集的针对荷兰注册顶级域名的500.000网络钓鱼电子邮件的主体进行深入分析来研究的。研究表明，大多数与COVID-19相关的网络钓鱼电子邮件都遵循已知的模式，表明肇事者更有可能适应，而不是重塑他们的计划。
