Newly published telemetry data collected by the researchers at Bitdefender suggests that U.S. reports of coronavirus-themed malware threat activity have been heaviest in states where testing has increased and the total number of confirmed infections has grown.
Among U.S. states, California reported the most threats in both March and April, followed by Texas. New York was third in March, but fell to fourth in April, supplanted by Florida. Ohio rounded out the top five.
These highly affected states are home to large populations, so it is not entirely surprising they would be subjected to larger numbers of COVID-19 incidents. Still, Bitdefender found the observation noteworthy.
“…[W]e noticed a correlation between the total number of new coronavirus tests for each state and our coronavirus-themed malware telemetry. It may or may not be a coincidence,” states a Bitdefender
blog post report authored by Senior Cybersecurity Analyst Liviu Arsene. “But we can safely infer that people who get tested are interested in learning more about potential treatments, medicine, medical best practices and maybe even other patients’ experiences. Therefore, those spending more time online looking for information about COVID-19 are more likely to fall prey to scams and malware related to coronavirus.”
