Beware Emails Discussing President Trump’s Health – Many Are Disguised Cyberattacks

Beware emails with subject lines related to President Trump’s COVID-19 infection and general health; many such messages are far more dangerous to you than to him.

Over the last few days I have received multiple messages with subject lines related to President Trump’s ongoing battle with the novel coronavirus: “Check out this information the whitehouse is not sharing about Trump’s health,” “The document Republicans don’t want you to see about Trump’s covid-19,” and other similarly-titled messages seem to arrive in my mailbox on a regular basis throughout the day.

While messages with such subject lines are certainly enticing to read – do not open them or follow the instructions in them; many are nothing more than cleverly disguised cyberattack vehicles; in some cases, the aforementioned emails that I received contained a poisoned attachment intended to infect the reader’s computer with malware, and, in other cases, the emails linked to a Google Document, which, rather than containing information about President Trump’s health, contained a link to a potentially malicious website disguised as a document-download link.

As we have seen on a regular basis for many years, cybercriminals constantly exploit trending news and topics of interest to solicit victims through social engineering attacks; please get your news from reliable news sources, and do not let President Trump’s misfortune become one of your own.