April 13, 2021 648 threats a minute as hackers thrive on pandemic crisis Even as people are busy dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, hackers seem to have a field day. The number of cyber attacks have doubled in the fourth quarter. “Covid-19-related cyber attack incidents increased by 240 per cent in the third quarter and by 114 per cent in the fourth quarter,” cyber security solutions company McAfee said, quoting the findings from the Threats Report: April 2021 Malware threats While in the third quarter, McAfee Labs observed an average of 588 threats per minute, an increase of 40 per cent over the second quarter, by the fourth quarter this increased to 648, showing an increase of 10 per cent over the previous quarter.