The Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on The spread of phishing on the Internet

ABSTRACT Phishing is a cyberattack designed to steal confidential data from internet users. Since phishing scams are typically sent via email, they can be thwarted by practicing good email security habits, such as checking the sender's domain and paying attention to the URL when clicking on links. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a significant increase in the use of digital technologies and the Internet, which has created new opportunities for phishing attackers. In this paper, we examine the spread of phishing during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the motivations of phishing attackers, the methods they use to carry out attacks, and the impact of the pandemic on individuals and organizations. We also discuss the challenges and opportunities for defending against phishing in the current context and provide recommendations for individuals and organizations to protect themselves from phishing attacks better. This paper is structured as a review paper for most of the research dealing with phishing. Since the time sequence is different since the emergence of the problem and how it spread more widely in the world at the time of the epidemic, we included in this paper most of the mechanisms for dealing with the problem, the way to solve it, and how to increase the awareness of users in dealing with it, based on the available technology.