Security researchers at Cofense have discovered that cybercriminals have begun to modify existing sextortion scams by demanding payment from victims in cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin.
Sextortion scam threat actors usually send an email informing their potential victims that they have installed malware on their systems and used it to record them while viewing adult content online through their webcam. The ransom is usually demanded in Bitcoin with the threat that if it is not paid, the cybercriminals will send the videos or images they captured to the family and colleagues of the victim.
However, because the email addresses used in these scams are often obtained as a result of a data breach, cybercriminals sometimes include a user's passwords in their initial email to make their threats more convincing.
While sextortion scams have become a threat, companies have started writing detection tools to block emails that look for keywords or Bitcoin addresses in the email body. To fix this problem, cybercriminals have started attaching PDF documents containing their threats.
Avoid detection
In the latest wave of sextorsion scams, Cofense discovered that cybercriminals were now using a wallet address in Litecoin, as opposed to Bitcoin, to avoid detection.
Many secure messaging gateways (SEGs) now have rules in place to detect Bitcoin addresses in the body of an email or PDF attachment containing ransom requests. As a result, the perpetrators of these attacks also had to change tactics.
According to Cofense, these new sextorion scams use emails written to contain very few searchable word patterns, making them more difficult to detect. for the SEG.
In addition to changing tactics, cybercriminals have started using cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin to demand ransom payments from victims. However, only a dozen cryptocurrencies are easy for victims to obtain during major trades. For these sextortion scams to be successful, victims must be able to easily pay for the cybercriminals who support them.
Fortunately, avoiding sextorsion scams is quite simple. Users can safely ignore these emails, because if a cybercriminal actually had access to a person's system, it would provide much stronger evidence than simply telling the user one of their own words. spend. At the same time, by checking sites like hasibeenpwned, users can see if their email address has been revealed, which would make them more likely to become the target of a sextortion scam.
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