The Year Targeted Phishing Went Mainstream

Minimalist · Aug 19, 2019

Phishing attacks: Why we're still losing the battle against phoney emails

Phishing is still the most common way for cyber attackers to gain entry into networks. Whether it's crooks looking for financial gain or state-backed hacking operations engaging in cyber espionage, it almost always starts with a message designed to make someone click a link or give away sensitive information. Just one person falling victim can be enough to provide hackers with the foothold they need to gain access to the whole corporate network and the confidential information stored within.
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https://www.zdnet.com/article/phish...till-losing-the-battle-against-phoney-emails/

guest · Aug 19, 2019

The anatomy of a sextortion spam campaign
August 19, 2019
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614177/the-anatomy-of-a-sextortion-spam-campaign/

However, the techniques behind sextortion and the economics that make it effective are poorly understood. Experts would dearly love to know more so they can estimate how much money spammers make in this way, and consequently how widespread the technique is likely to become.

Paquet-Clouston and co say that sextortion scammers use different pricing strategies for different languages. “Overall, spammers ask higher amounts, on average, for spams sent in English, Slovenian and Korean and lower amounts, on average, for spams sent in Polish, Italian and Spanish,” they conclude.

The researchers first used a cloud-based email filtering service, offered by a company called Excello, to gather a database of sextortion emails sent out during 2018 and 2019.
The team also study the Bitcoin accounts that accepted extortion payments. Although these are anonymous, the transactions themselves are completely transparent. “Filtering out unrelated transactions, we conclude that this sextortion scheme generated a lower-bound revenue between $1,300,620 and $1,352,266 for an 11-month period,” say Paquet-Clouston and co.
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Minimalist · Aug 22, 2019

Phishing: These are the companies that hackers impersonate when they try to steal your data

Microsoft is still the brand most spoofed by cyber criminals attempting to conduct phishing attacks – but fraudsters are increasingly sending phony emails claiming to be the likes of Facebook and Amazon to steal login credentials, financial data and other information from victims.
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https://www.zdnet.com/article/phish...impersonate-when-they-try-to-steal-your-data/

Minimalist · Aug 22, 2019

The lucrative business of Bitcoin sextortion scams

After a quiet period following a surge in late 2018 to early 2019, the online blackmail scheme known as sextortion scams are back on the radar and on the uptick.

According to a report from Digital Shadows, a leading UK-based cybersecurity company that monitors potential threats against businesses, there are several resources available to embolden novice criminals to a life of extortion. These resources include: access to credentials leaked from past breaches, tools and technologies that aid in creating campaigns, training from online extortionists, and a trove of DIY extortion guides that exist on the dark web.
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https://blog.malwarebytes.com/scams/2019/08/the-lucrative-business-of-bitcoin-sextortion-scams/

Minimalist · Aug 22, 2019

Alaska is the Most Scammed State in America

An annual report on cybercrime by the Federal Bureau of Investigation has revealed Alaska to be the most scammed state in America for the second year running.

With more than $450 million stolen, sunny California lost more money than any other state, but at 21.67 victims per 10,000 residents, Alaska had the highest per capita victim count.
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https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/the-most-scammed-state-in-america/

Minimalist · Aug 31, 2019

Latest Sextortion Email Scheme Sent by ChaosCC Hacker Group

A new sextortion scam is underway that claims to be from the ChaosCC hacker group who states they infected the recipient's computer with a Trojan that videoed them on adult web sites.
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https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...on-email-scheme-sent-by-chaoscc-hacker-group/

Minimalist · Sep 2, 2019

Tech-literate millennials are the biggest victims of bank scams

Millennials are falling victim to scams involving handing money to fraudsters more than any other age group, according to Lloyds Bank.
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https://techerati.com/news-hub/bank-scams-fraudsters-lloyds-millennials/

guest · Sep 12, 2019

Ireland Hit by Pedophile Sextortion Email Scam
September 12, 2019
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/ireland-hit-by-pedophile/

Residents of Ireland are being targeted by an aggressive email sextortion scam that accuses recipients of being pedophiles before threatening to expose them as such unless a ransom is paid.

The scam was highlighted yesterday by the Irish arm of IT security company ESET, which posted a warning on its website. ESET Ireland registered several complaints related to the illegal extortion scam.

Victims were sent emails with the subject lines "I know you are a pedophile . . ." and "What the **** are you doing, pedophile?" from someone claiming to be an internet security specialist affiliated with the Anonymous group.
Victims were told that four video files in which they were captured masturbating to illegal porn were in the possession of the hacker, who threatened to send them out to everyone in the victim's address book unless a Bitcoin ransom of 5,000 GBP was paid.
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ESET Ireland recommends that anyone who has received these emails does not reply and marks them as spam. If the emails contain any identifiable personal info, recipients are advised to report them to the police.
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guest · Oct 8, 2019

New sextortion campaign taps altcoins to avoid detection
Cryptocurrency rules designed to protect email accounts from phishing are being fooled through a pivot from Bitcoin to Litecoin
October 8, 2019
https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-sextortion-campaign-taps-altcoins-to-avoid-detection/

A new phishing sextortion campaign has switched from the standard ransom demands for Bitcoin (BTC) to alternative coins in an attempt to bypass email protections.

On Tuesday, phishing simulation provider Cofense said the new technique has been successful in circumventing security layers implemented by email providers and their Secure Email Gateways (SEGs).
Emails that contain a Bitcoin wallet address are now often barred by SEGs, and so to bypass these rules, fraudsters are now turning to Litecoin (LTC).

"Previous iterations showed a gradual shift away from identifiable patterns and to alternative cryptocurrencies, in an attempt to foil SEG bitcoin-detection rules," Cofense says. "The current emails appear to be crafted to contain very few searchable word patterns."
While there are countless altcoins out there, alternatives still need to be accessible enough by an average individual to ensure the scam is successful.
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Cofense: New Phishing Sextortion Campaign Using Alternative Crypto Currencies to Evade Detection

guest · Oct 16, 2019

Malware Uses Your PC to Send 30K Sextortion Emails Per Hour
October 16, 2019
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...ur-pc-to-send-30k-sextortion-emails-per-hour/

Sextortion emails stating that your computer was hacked and video was created of you on porn sites have become so common that many ignore them and treat them simply as another spam. That does not mean, though, that they are not profitable as a new report shows that the attackers are generating a decent revenue stream by utilizing infected PCs to do their dirty work.

In a new report by Check Point Research, researchers show how the Phorpiex botnet is being used to distribute millions of sextortion emails and are generating a tidy sum doing so.
Phorpiex botnet makes you do the dirty work
"The spam bot is one of the final payloads in each Phorpiex campaign observed in 2019," the researchers stated in their report. "The Phorpiex spam bot doesn’t have its own persistence mechanism, as it is downloaded and executed by other Phorpiex modules."

When installed, the spam bot module will connect to the malware's command & control servers and attempt to download email databases consisting of up to 20,000 email addresses per database. Some of these spam campaigns had 325 to 1363 email databases on a single command & control server, allowing an infected PC to spam millions of potential victims with sextortion emails like the one below.
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Check Point: In the Footsteps of a Sextortion Campaign

guest · Nov 9, 2019

Why Email Extortion Schemes Are Skyrocketing — And How to Protect Yourself Against Them
A confluence of technologies has made the scams easier and cheaper to launch than ever before
November 7, 2019
https://www.symantec.com/blogs/feat...cketing-and-how-protect-yourself-against-them

In the scam, someone makes false claims to have hacked your webcam and recorded you, says they discovered you had visited porn sites, or claims they’ve uncovered other actions you’d prefer not be made public. Unless you pay up, the extortionist says, he’ll publish the footage or reveal what you’ve done in other ways. All untrue, but enough to scare most people.

In this article, we’ll delve into why the scam have become so popular, and how to protect yourself and your enterprise against them.
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There’s some good news about email extortion: Unlike sophisticated cyber attacks, it’s relatively easy to protect against it. The most important rule is simple: Don’t pay the extortionist. His threat is an empty one, and you can safely ignore it.
Beyond that, Downs says, “Don’t answer emails from people you don’t know. Don’t click on attachments. Don’t click on links that look funny.”
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guest · Nov 17, 2019

mood said: ↑

Cofense Labs Publishes Database of Over 200 Million Compromised Accounts Targeted by Sextortion Email Campaigns
August 5, 2019
https://cofense.com/cofense-labs-pu...accounts-targeted-sextortion-email-campaigns/
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Cofense Labs Has Identified a Sextortion Botnet in the Wild – and it’s Growing
November 14, 2019
https://cofense.com/sextortion-botnet-growing-reached-organization/

That database has since grown to over 330 million email addresses.
We have also identified an increase in the number of unique web domains being targeted by the botnet. When we released our original findings, the database had close to 6 million unique domains. That total has grown to 7.4 million unique domains.

Cofense LabsTM has created a sextortion lookup tool to check impacted accounts and domains as well as a resource center with helpful tips on how to protect your organization and your personal accounts from falling victim to these types of threats as well as the steps you can take should you receive a sextortion scam.
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guest · Dec 31, 2019

Sextortion Email Scammers Try New Tactics to Bypass Spam Filters
December 31, 2019
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...mmers-try-new-tactics-to-bypass-spam-filters/

Sextortion scammers have started to utilize new tactics to bypass spam filters and secure email gateways so that their scam emails are delivered to their intended recipients.

Sextortion scams are emails that pretend to be from an attacker who has hacked your PC and installed malware that can monitor what sites you visit and create videos using your webcam.
Using new evasion tactics
To bypass these filters, attackers have started to utilize new tactics such as sending sextortion emails in foreign languages and splitting bitcoin addresses into two parts.
This is illustrated in a new sextortion email shared with BleepingComputer where the scammers are sending these emails to English speaking users but with the content written in Russian.

As always, if you receive a sextortion email you do not have anything to worry about.
The scammers did not hack your computer, install malware that records you while on adult sites, and you should not send any payments to the enclosed bitcoin address.
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guest · Jan 14, 2020

Sextortion campaign hits Nest home security cameras
January 13, 2020
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252476643/Sextortion-campaign-hits-Nest-home-security-cameras

Organised criminals are playing on growing mainstream awareness of the risks of smart, connected internet of things (IoT) devices in a sextortion campaign targeting the owners of Google Nest home security cameras.
The campaign was uncovered by researchers at email cyber security company Mimecast, which found almost 1,700 examples sent to individuals, mostly in the US, earlier in January.

However, unlike in standard cases, where the original email will often link to, for example, a Bitcoin wallet, the first email does not tell the victim what the hackers want, just that they have the footage.

“They are trying to make it harder for people to detect what’s happening. They’re putting in more effort,” said Addison.
Instead, the victims are given a password to log in to an external web email account where they will find an email with a link to a site that contains genuine footage downloaded from the Nest site – note that this is not footage taken from the victim’s device.

“The campaign is exploiting the fact people know these [IoT] devices can be hacked very easily and preying on fears of that,” Addison told Computer Weekly.
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guest · Jan 19, 2020

New Nest Video Extortion Scam Plays Out Like a Spy Game
January 19, 2020
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...deo-extortion-scam-plays-out-like-a-spy-game/

A new sextortion scam that breaks the typical mold has been detected at the beginning of the year. Fraudsters preying on the insecurity of connected devices used footage from Nest cameras, and led victims through a convoluted path of email accounts and web sites before making their ransom price known.
Hopping from one email contact to another
The scammers do not stray away from the classic scheme and claim to have a nude video of the victim, threatening to make it public on an adult website unless they get paid.
The footage claims to have been obtained after infecting the victim’s phone with malware that also propagates to neighboring devices with recording capabilities.

“While it doesn’t belong to the victims and their Nest cameras have not been hacked into on this occasion, the footage from Nest’s official website was used to scare the victims.” Mimecast
To increase panic and push victims into sending money, the fraudsters’ narrative is that they had been monitoring for 11 months and that they can track the victim by triangulating the signal from a mobile phone.
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guest · Jan 31, 2020

Ashley Madison cyber-breach: 5 years later, users are being targeted with ‘sextortion’ scams
January 31, 2020
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/31/ashley-madison-breach-from-2015-being-used-in-sextortion-scams.html

Scammers have found a new way to wring money out of unsuspecting victims of the 2015 breach of the Ashley Madison affair-dating website, by using their stolen credentials in an amped-up version of the common “sextortion” scam.

Researchers at email security company Vade Secure found the new scam earlier this year, when they saw a small number of targeted emails with apparent information from Ashley Madison breach victims.
The threats are a worrying evolution of the sextortion scam because they appear to incorporate real information.

But in the new Ashley Madison cases, Gendre said the scammers are using carefully selected information that appear to be from real Ashley Madison subscribers, and piecing that information into more precisely targeted emails to those individuals. The ransomers then demand around $1,000 in bitcoin to keep the information silent. The grain of truth to their pitch sets the scam apart.
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guest · Feb 5, 2020

I have clips of you watching adult videos': Aussie sextortion scam
February 6, 2020
https://www.9news.com.au/technology...t-videos/d2057266-fd5a-4734-8959-371e2ef87a01

Aussies are again being warned to avoid paying email ransoms after a series of sextortion scams have been discovered flooding inboxes across the country.

The plain-text emails are sent using the subject "I have clips of you watching adult videos" and claim to be from a hacker who allegedly found a vulnerability in the recipient's router.

"Every device connected on the network were compromised," the email explains.
The hacker then threatens to release the video to each of the victim's contacts if $1300 is not sent to them in Bitcoin within 72 hours. A payment address listed in two parts.
Email security company MailGuard, which first discovered the scam, urged recipients to delete the email and avoid paying any ransoms.
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guest · Mar 9, 2020

Malware Spread as Nude Extortion Pics of Friend's Girlfriend
March 9, 2020
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...as-nude-extortion-pics-of-friends-girlfriend/

Attackers have recently warped sextortion scams into baits used to infect their targets with Raccoon information stealer malware designed to help steal credentials, credit card information, desktop cryptocurrency wallets, and more.
Sextortion campaign failure used as a lure
As IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence researchers discovered, the attackers are now luring victims using emails promising to give access to the nude extortion pics of a friend's girlfriend.
These emails have a variety of subjects, such as "Mail belonging to your colleague has been stolen," "Private info belonging to your friend has been stolen", "Your colleague’s account was compromised," or "We have got access to your friend’s account."

By playing the failed sextortion scam card, the campaign's operators attempt to tempt their potential victims to open a malicious attachment with a blurred image that requires them to enable content to be viewed.
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guest · Apr 9, 2020

Large email extortion campaign underway, DON'T PANIC!
April 9, 2020
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/large-email-extortion-campaign-underway-dont-panic/

In today's email extortion campaign, the attackers have gone back to basics and have started emailing people stating that their computers were hacked, a video was taken using their webcam, and that they know their passwords.
The listed passwords are in many cases actual passwords used by the recipient in the past, but the attacker does not know them by hacking your account, but rather through leaked data breaches shared online.

Everyone needs to know that these emails are fake, scams, and nothing to worry about.
As scary as they may seem, especially if they are including passwords you currently use or have used in the past, recipients should not send any payments to the scammers.
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guest · Apr 19, 2020

MailGuard warns against extortion phishing emails
April 20, 2020
https://securitybrief.co.nz/story/mailguard-warns-against-extortion-phishing-emails

MailGuard has highlighted dangerous email scams following its interception of a large run of extortion phishing emails that demand a ransom payment in bitcoin.

According to MailGuard, there are several versions of the email scam, however the overall theme is the same and all attempt to blackmail their target.
For instance, the email will tell the victims that sensitive, often deeply personal and embarrassing information has been obtained and unless a ransom payment is made in bitcoin the content will be published.

"This is a reminder to be careful about how we use our mobile devices and computers, and of the threat of online surveillance. Think carefully about what data is being stored or shared online that might be used against you," the company wrote in a statement.
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guest · Apr 21, 2020

FBI: Extortion scammers more active due to stay-at-home orders
April 20, 2020
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...mmers-more-active-due-to-stay-at-home-orders/

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned today of an increasing number of online extortion scam reports because a lot more people are being targeted due to the "stay-at-home" orders issued during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Because large swaths of the population are staying at home and likely using the computer more than usual, scammers may use this opportunity to find new victims and pressure them into sending money," the alert issued by FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) says.
"The scammers are sending e-mails threatening to release sexually explicit photos or personally compromising videos to the individual's contacts if they do not pay. While there are many variations of these online extortion attempts, they often share certain commonalties."

Among the various signs that should make you think twice before giving course to the scammers' demands, the agency highlights the following 'red flags:' [...]
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guest · May 11, 2020

More than 9,400 sextortion scam emails reported in the last month
May 11, 2020
https://www.leaderlive.co.uk/news/18440855.9-400-sextortion-scam-emails-reported-last-month/

A sextortion phishing scam, first identified by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) in July 2018, continues to be reported to Action Fraud in high numbers.
So far this month, Action Fraud has received 9,473 reports of this email scam.

The emails contain the victim’s own password in the subject line and demand a payment in Bitcoin to prevent videos of the victim, on their computer visiting adult websites, being shared.

“The criminals sending these emails are ruthless, unscrupulous individuals who don’t care about the impact of their actions on victims. They seek to exploit people’s emotions - shaming and scaring the recipient enough, that they make a payment.
Do not be tempted to make the Bitcoin payment. Doing so may encourage the criminal to contact you again for more money.
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guest · Jun 16, 2020

Sextortionists Using Social Engineering Tactics to Collect Victims’ Data
June 16, 2020
https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-s...-engineering-tactics-to-collect-victims-data/

Security researchers observed sextortionists leveraging social engineering techniques to steal their victims’ personal information.

SANS’ Internet Storm Center (ISC) discovered that sextortionists had begun creating profiles for young women on dating websites. They used those profiles and the stated interest of finding “good times” to connect with new contacts on the platforms.
Once they connected with someone on the dating website, they used social engineering techniques to convince their target into disclosing their names, mobile phone numbers, locations, sexual preferences and other information

At the time of discovery, the forum contained a page informing victims that they could become “unlisted” from the website by paying a fee to “help the project.”
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This isn’t the first time that sextortionists have abused victims’ personal information. Back in July 2018, for instance, researchers detected a sextortion scam attempt that used breached passwords to trick their victims into thinking that they had suffered a data breach.
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