Kaspersky warns of COVID-19 vaccines available for sale on the Darkweb

03/14/2021 10:47:33 AM

As the world undergoes the recent largest and complex vaccination campaign, it wasn't really that surprising when scammers and sellers on the dark market are also joining the trend and make a profit off the process.

Kaspersky learned this after examining 15 different marketplaces on the Darknet, which they found advertisements for three major COVID vaccines – Pfizer/BioNTech, AstraZeneca, and Moderna, as well as unverified “COVID19” vaccines.

The majority of these underground sellers are based from France, Germany, the UK, and the USA, with prices per dose ranged from $250 to $1,200, and an average cost of about $500. To do this, communications are done via encrypted messaging apps like Wickr and Telegram, while payments are requested in the form of cryptocurrency, primarily Bitcoin.

The said sellers managed to produce around 100-500 transactions,  indicating that they’ve been completing sales but what exactly Darknet users are purchasing remains unclear. With the information available to Kaspersky experts, it’s impossible to tell how many of the vaccine doses are being advertised online as the actual doses (many medical facilities have found themselves with leftover doses) and how many ads turn out to be a scam.

Even if you did receive something in the mail, most likely what you would receive would not be an effective, valid dose. More importantly, obtaining such doses is illegal.

“You can find just about anything on the Darknet, so it’s not surprising sellers there would attempt to capitalize on the vaccination campaign. Over the past year, there have been a whole host of scams exploiting the COVID topic, and many of them have been successful. Right now, not only are people selling vaccine doses, but they’re also selling vaccination records—pieces of paper that can help you travel freely. It’s important for users to be cautious of any “deal” related to the pandemic, and, of course, it’s never a good idea to buy a vaccine off the Darknet,” commented Dmitry Galov, a security expert at Kaspersky.

Kaspersky experts recommend these measures to spare themselves from scammers during this pandemic era.:

• Never buy products—including vaccine doses—on the Darknet
• If you see an advertisement for something related to COVID, look carefully at the URLs of the sites that you visit. If just one letter looks out of place, or if the usual .com has been replaced with .com.tk or something along those lines, your gut should tell you it’s phishing. Never enter personal information on such a site.
• Pay attention to grammar and layout on both the sites you visit and the emails you receive. If something smells phishy, it probably is

More details regarding Darkness vaccines can be found on Kdaily. 

Author: slickmaster | © 2021 The SlickMaster's Files