Hackers eye students returning to virtual classes as easy targets

As many students across the country are returning to school online this fall, they face a potential wave of cyberattacks from hackers seeking to take advantage of academic institutions conducting remote classes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Universities and schools are scrambling to address threats such as a surge in malicious phishing emails, “Zoombombs” and other kinds of attacks. But with weakened budgets and students learning off campus, they are facing an uphill battle.

“We are seeing a dramatic increase in phishing, this is fully expected, we knew it would happen with any major calamity,” Michael Tran Duff, chief privacy officer and chief information security officer (CISO) at Stanford University, said during a virtual event hosted by software company Proofpoint on Wednesday.

Stanford was among several universities impacted by a phishing email scheme earlier this year which saw cyber predators using the student emails to apply for fraudulent loans.

Duff noted that malicious actors often target former government officials working at Stanford, but emphasized that the majority of incidents are “targeted indiscriminately.”

“It’s not surprising that these phishing attacks — especially because this is one of the greatest disruptions our country has ever seen — have been more successful maybe than in the past,” Duff said.

Helen Patton, the CISO of Ohio State University, noted during the same virtual event that while the pandemic had “interrupted the business of cybercrime,” she has seen high levels of phishing emails sent to those affiliated with the university.

“We see an increase in phishing attacks when our people come back to college in the fall because they know our folks are going to be more off kilter,” Patton said. “When summer came, into May and June, the normal expectation would be to see phishing decrease, we didn’t quite see that this year.”

The concerns of the university officials have been magnified by warnings from federal agencies of foreign cyber attackers targeting groups involved in COVID-19 research.