Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Malware Infections In The U.S. During The Covid-19 Pandemic: An Empirical Study, Sydney Gero, Sinchul Back, Jennifer Laprade, Joonggon Kim

International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world in many ways, especially in the landscape of cyber threats. The pandemic has pro-vided cybercriminals with more opportunities to commit crimes due to more people engaging in online activities, along with the increased use of computers for school, work, and social events. The current study seeks to explore cybercrime trends, in particular malware infections, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, this study examines the relationship between the number of malware in-fections, COVID-19 positive cases, closed non-essential businesses, and closed K-12 public schools in the United States. Data utilized in this study derives from (1) …