Bogus Porn Emails Using Old Passwords to Scam You Out of Cash

A word of alert: there'due south a new porn e-mail scam that uses people's old passwords and phone numbers to scare them into thinking a hacker has taken over their computers.

On Wednesday, security researchers at Cisco's Talos group reported that scammers have made at least $146,000 by circulating the sextortion messages. It works like this: You'll receive an email that claims to have filmed you watching porn. If y'all don't pay up in Bitcoin, the hacker will send the embarrassing video to your family unit or spouse.

The scheme itself is nothing new. But lately, scammers have been upgrading their tactics. To trick you into believing their threats, they'll include an old password or phone number that really belongs to y'all.

"I am well aware randy55 i of your password," the electronic mail might say, before demanding up to $7,000 in bitcoin.

Equally the sender's awful grammar might advise, the threat is all a ruse. The scammers know nothing nearly you, nor have they secretly infected your figurer with malware. They've just harvested your old password or phone number from past data breaches, which can found online in shady corners of the cyberspace.

Cisco Talos researchers accept been investigating the scam, which dates back to at to the lowest degree June. To find out how much the scheme has been raking in, they looked at 230,000 of sextortion messages that were filtered by SpamCop from Aug. thirty to Oct. 26.

Each message included a Bitcoin wallet accost as a way to let the victim forward the ransom payment to the spammers. Researchers looked through thousands of addresses and discovered that only 83 wallets had a positive balance. Merely in total, the wallets had amassed up to 23 bitcoin, or about $146,000.

"That isn't besides bad considering the attackers have just been distributing this particular scam for roughly 60 days, and do not actually possess whatever compromising fabric concerning the victim," the researchers said.

The spammers take also been persistent. On average, they bombard victims with about 15 sextortion messages. "One unlucky victim from our dataset was contacted a staggering 354 times," the researchers added.

Cisco Talos released its findings weeks after IBM researchers also warned almost the porn scam, which they said has been circulating through millions of emails in dissimilar languages including English, French, and Japanese.

According to IBM, an infamous botnet called Necurs may be sending the messages. The botnet is believed to have enslaved at least a one thousand thousand computers and is available to hire for cybercriminals.

Cisco Talos said its own research overlaps with some of IBM's findings. The spammers announced to be using a whole variety of different e-mail scam formats, some of which include bodily passwords or telephone numbers, whereas others simply claim to have filmed the victim masturbating or cheating on their spouse.

On Wednesday, security provider Barracuda Networks also published a blog post, warning nigh the porn scam, which information technology said was ongoing. "Ane adult female we spoke to has received a variant of the sextortion scam email iii times since the beginning of October. Each email she received came well-nigh a calendar week apart, and the threats inverse each fourth dimension," the company said.

To avoid falling for these schemes, security researchers recommend you ignore any emails from senders you don't know. Educating yourself on the latest e-mail-based scams is a practiced idea, too.

"Doing web searches for key phrases in suspect emails may help to verify that a scam is taking identify or at least increase sensation of the attack," Barracuda Networks said. "Always pay close attending to the details and do not assume that a breached countersign or spoofed email means that you are currently compromised. Ask your Isp or tech back up for assistance if you accept questions."

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/news/30207/bogus-porn-emails-using-old-passwords-to-scam-you-out-of-cash

Posted by: oakeshispers.blogspot.com

Share this post