Cyber Alerts

Advisory on Cyber Threat Using COVID-19 Outbreak As Theme

Verified Officially confirmed

The National Cyber Coordination and Command Centre (NC4) continuously monitor the cyber threat landscape that may affect national security both locally and globally. We have observed an increased number of cyberattacks, targeting multiple organisations worldwide, taking advantage of Coronavirus (COVID-19) public health issue as a lure to attract victims to fall into their traps. With the recent announcement of Movement Control Order (MCO) by the Prime Minister of Malaysia, which requires all non-essential government and business premises to be closed from 18 to 31 March 2020, the NC4, National Cyber Security Agency (NACSA), National Security Council (NSC) would like to remind everyone to be vigilant and to continue to observe the cyber hygiene practices while working from home.

First observed: 17 Mar 2020
Last checked: 01 Aug 2026
Evidence records: 1
Publication state: Published

What happened?

Current assessment

Why it matters

Loss of information, service disruption, information exposure and financial loss.

Who is affected?

Affected products and groups

No affected entity has been safely confirmed in the structured record yet.

What should you do now?

Actions from official guidance

For technical teams

The NC4 would like to advice organisations and individuals to take the following precautionary steps during this period of MCO: Official source
to harden the ICT infrastructure that will support the Work-From-Home policy and the spike of online transactions from the public users; to verify any information received from emails, text messages and social media posts regarding COVID-19; to use Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections to access your internal resources; to not open any suspicious links or emails; to not visit any untrusted websites; to not simply enter personal information, such as email address or password, whenever you are requested to do so; to change your password if you think it is stolen; to update your mobile phone and computer’s operating system and applications regularly; to apply the latest patches for your system and application to protect from being exploited; to monitor your network traffic and block attempts to exploit your server and network; be careful and verify any calls claiming from legal enforcement agencies, banks or companies that you may have been dealings with; to contact law enforcement agency should you suspect that you have been a victim of a scam; to block malicious emails with subjects and hashes listed in Appendix 1; and to report to NACSA if your server has been breached or defaced. Official source

Which sources support it?

Evidence and official sources

NACSA / NC4 Alerts and AdvisoriesOfficial source
Advisory on Cyber Threat Using COVID-19 Outbreak As Theme
The National Cyber Coordination and Command Centre (NC4) continuously monitor the cyber threat landscape that may affect national security both locally and globally. We have observed an increased number of cyberattacks, targeting multiple organisations worldwide, taking advantage of Coronavirus (COVID-19) public health issue as a lure to attract victims to fall into their traps. With the recent announcement of Movement Control Order (MCO) by the Prime Minister of Malaysia, which requires all non-essential government and business premises to be closed from 18 to 31 March 2020, the NC4, National Cyber Security Agency (NACSA), National Security Council (NSC) would like to remind everyone to be vigilant and to continue to observe the cyber hygiene practices while working from home.
Published 17 Mar 2020 · Retrieved 01 Aug 2026