Attackers are impersonating the Canadian government’s COVID-19

Attackers are impersonating the Canadian government’s COVID-19 contact tracing app which is yet to be released for public.

Governments around the world have been taking measures to combat the Coronavirus. One tactic involved is that the use of contact tracing apps to assist hunt individuals who may are in touch with a victim of the virus, therefore being at risk themselves.












One such country happens to be Canada who recently announced the discharge of an app named “COVID Alert” which can be available to Canadians countrywide in only over a month’s time.However, attackers haven’t waited and have already started an impersonation campaign by releasing a fake Android app that claims to be from Health Canada but in actuality is a devious piece of malware leading to ransomware infection.


This reminds us of a recent report in which hackers were caught impersonating fake government-issued COVID-19 contact tracing apps to spread spyware.The campaign works in such a way that once the user installs the appliance , it results in ransomware named CryCryptor being installed on their devices. The malware then requests permissions to access files on the device after which it subsequently starts encrypting the info involving different file extensions.