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Kochi, May 22: During the nationwide COVID-19 lockdown, Kerala recorded the highest number of cyber attacks followed by Punjab and Tamil Nadu, a study by anti-virus software firm K7 Computing said on Thursday.

In a statement issued in Chennai, the company said its K7 Computing's Cyber Threat Report, a comprehensive analysis of cyber attacks during the lockdown has found that Kerala recorded the highest number of cyber attacks during this period. The report analyses various cyber attacks within India during the pandemic and reveals that threat actors targeted the state with COVID-themed attacks aimed at exploiting user trust.

In Kerala, regions like Kottayam, Kannur, Kollam, and Kochi saw the highest hits with 462, 374, 236, and 147 attacks respectively, while the state as a whole saw around 2,000 attacks during the period - the highest thus far in the country.

This was followed by Punjab with 207 attacks and Tamil Nadu with 184 attacks, the company said.

The sudden surge in the frequency of attacks witnessed from February 2020 to mid-April 2020 indicates that scamsters across the world were exploiting the widespread panic around coronavirus at both the individual and corporate level.

These attacks aimed to compromise computers and mobile devices to gain access to users' confidential data, banking details, and cryptocurrency accounts.

The key threats seen during this period ranged from phishing attacks to rogue apps disguised as COVID-19 information apps that targeted users' sensitive data. Phishing attacks were noticed more in Tier-II and Tier-III cities while the metros fared better. Smaller cities saw over 250 attacks being blocked per 10,000 users.

Users from Ghaziabad and Lucknow seem to have faced almost 6 and 4 times the number of attacks as Bengaluru users.

According to the statement, a majority of the recorded attacks were phishing attacks with sophisticated campaigns that could easily snare even the most educated users. These attacks were aimed at heightening users' fears and creating a sense of urgency to take action.

K7 Labs noticed phishing attacks where scamsters posed as representatives of the United States Department of Treasury, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the company said.

Users were encouraged to visit links that would automatically download malware on the host computer such as the Agent Tesla keylogger or Lokibot information-stealing malware, infamous banking Trojans such as Trickbot or Zeus Sphinx, and even disastrous ransomware.

Other attacks included infected COVID-19 Android apps like CoronaSafetyMask that scam users with promises of masks for an upfront payment; the spyware app Project Spy; and seemingly genuine apps that are infected with dangerous malware like banking Trojans such as Ginp, Anubis and Cerberus.

"Covid-19 has created an ideal situation for various threat actors to target individuals and enterprises alike. The panic caused by the stringent lockdown measures and rapid spread of this virus has left many people looking for more information on the situation," J. Kesavardhanan, Founder and CEO of K7 Computing was quoted as saying in the statement.

"Threat actors exploit this fear to their advantage and scam users into downloading malicious software and divulging sensitive information like banking codes. The need to be cyber cautious has never been greater. This is more so in the case of corporates who have adopted a work from home policy hurriedly without adequate cyber hygiene. We have seen an increase in attacks on enterprises and SME employees as well," he added.

Such attacks are expected to continue till normalcy returns. Social engineering attacks targeted at winning users' trust will gain momentum.

Healthcare institutions, well-known government offices, and international organisations will continue to be a prime target throughout the pandemic, the statement said.

In a study conducted in 117 countries, researchers have found that the world is experiencing the most dramatic reduction in the seismic noise (the hum of vibrations in the planet's crust) in recorded history due to global COVID-19 lockdowns.

Measured by instruments called seismometers, seismic noise is caused by vibrations within the Earth, which travel like waves and the waves can be triggered by earthquakes, volcanoes, and bombs - but also by daily human activity like travel and industry.

This quiet period was likely caused by the total global effect of social distancing measures, closure of services and industry, and drops in tourism and travel, the study published in the journal Science, reported.

The new research, led by the Royal Observatory of Belgium and five other institutions around the world including Imperial College London (ICL), showed that the dampening of 'seismic noise' caused by humans was more pronounced in more densely populated areas.

"Our study uniquely highlights just how much human activities impact the solid Earth, and could let us see more clearly than ever what differentiates human and natural noise," said study co-author Stephen Hicks from ICL in the UK.

For the findings, the research team looked at seismic data from a global network of 268 seismic stations in 117 countries and found significant noise reductions compared to before any lockdown at 185 of those stations.

Researchers tracked the 'wave' of quietening between March and May as worldwide lockdown measures took hold.

The largest drops in vibrations were seen in the most densely populated areas, like Singapore and New York City, but drops were also seen in remote areas like Germany's the Black Forest and Rundu in Namibia.

Citizen-owned seismometers, which tend to measure more localised noise, noted large drops around universities and schools around Cornwall, UK and Boston, US - a drop in noise 20 per cent larger than seen during school holidays.

The findings showed that countries like Barbados, where lockdown coincided with the tourist season, saw a 50 per cent decrease in noise.

"The changes have also given us the opportunity to listen in to the Earth's natural vibrations without the distortions of human input," the study authors wrote.

Earlier in April, a study published in the journal Nature, reported at least a 30 per cent reduction in that amount of ambient human noise since lockdown began in Belgium.

Twitter has hinted that it is planning a paid subscription platform that can be reused by other teams in the future.

The news that the micro-blogging platform is building a subscription platform with a team codenamed "Gryphon" resulted in Twitter stock rising over 8% on Wednesday.

Twitter revealed its plan via a job listing that seeks a full-stack senior software engineer in New York to join "Gryphon".

Interestingly, Twitter "edited" the job listing once the news broke, removing the part about "Gryphon" and any mention of their internal team or their subscription feature. The listing said the company is looking for an Android engineer to "work on a bevy of backend engineering teams to build components that allow for experimentation to deliver the best experience possible to all of our users".

Later, Twitter users noticed that the company restored the earlier job listing that mentioned the upcoming subscription platform and "Gryphon".

A spokesperson for Twitter told CNN on Wednesday that it's only a job posting, not a product announcement.

This is not the first time Twitter has thought of a paid product. 

In 2017, it sent out a survey to users and a preview of what a premium offering of its TweetDeck app might look like, including breaking news alerts and more analytics, according to The Verge.

"We're conducting this survey to assess the interest in a new, more enhanced version of Tweetdeck. We regularly conduct user research to gather feedback about people's Twitter experience and to better inform our product investment decisions, and we're exploring several ways to make TweetDeck even more valuable for professionals," a Twitter spokesperson had said at that time.