Last Updated on March 30, 2020

It’s time to publish the first timeline of March containing the main events collected in the news in the third month of this troubled 2020. In this timeline I have collected 77 events (including 5 occurred in February), so it’ a sharp drop in comparison to February. I wonder if this is a positive consequence of the COVID-19 (for example ransomware operators promising to not target hospitals) despite, as you will discover soon, crooks are trying to capitalize the pandemic with an increasingly growing number of themed campaigns.

So if the COVID-19 pandemic is one element characterizing this timeline, ransomware attacks continue to be the majority of events. However, I don’t know if this is a coincidence of the above-mentioned truce, the number plunged to 18 (from 28 in the second half of February). Unfortunately this drop did not prevent to target some organizations facing the COVID-19 emergency such as the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District (in reality even the Brno University Hospital was hit, whether it’s not clear if it was ransomware.

Interestingly, even state-sponsored actors are jumping on the COVID-19 bandwagon. with at least two Chinese APTs (Mustang Panda and Vicious Panda) leveraging the pandemic for two operations respectively against targets in Vietnam and a public sector entity in Mongolia. Of course these are not the only operations motivated by cyber espionage, whose list also include other well-know actors as Turla, Kimsuky, and APT34.

Don’t be impatient, that’s all for the summary. The timeline is all yours, and contains the details that you can browse and share to support my work and spread the risk awareness across the community. And don’t forget to follow @paulsparrows on Twitter, or even connect on Linkedin, for the latest updates.

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