That invitation you received via Zoom could be malware in disguise.

This information may be of interest to all those who, in the last year, have used platforms such as Teams and Zoom to hold virtual meetings, i.e. a significant portion of the planet’s inhabitants.

According to a report by Atlas VPN, the number of malware campaigns impersonating some of these well-known video conferencing tools has increased 12-fold in just one year.

From data obtained by Russian cybersecurity experts Kaspersky, the number of malicious files disguised as meeting invitations by Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Webex, HighFive, Lifesize, Join.me, Flock or Gotomeeting increased from 90 thousand in March 2020 to 1.05 million in February 2021.

In fact, 1.15 million such incidents were detected in January this year alone.

The cybersecurity report is alarming, anticipating that this 2021 will be worse in terms of web security, especially considering the number of people who will continue to work from home in the wake of the global health crisis.

In the past year, for example, the average number of attacks was 411,000 per month, with the volume growing steadily throughout the year to peak in November and December.

In total there were 4.11 million attacks in 2020. By way of contrast, January and February 2021 alone have already seen 2.2 million such incidents.

To avoid such attacks, experts recommend ignoring any unknown emails that come with links or attachments.