A new Sextortion scam is out there. It is a form of blackmail where the criminal will claim to have placed a RAT (Remote Access Trojan) on your system and recorded photos or videos of the you watching adult content on your computer.
The scammers will send you an email that looks like it is coming from yourself (spoofing your email address) and claim that they have infected your computer with the backdoor Trojan which allowed them to take control of your computer. The criminals will then threatens to email compromising images of you out to the your entire email address book unless you pay them via bitcoin within one day. Like most scammers, they will be vague on the details of the sites the victims.
This sort of scam we seen before in the past. The extortionist usually have no access to your computer, almost never had pictures, videos, screen captures or browser history. It’s an empty threat. The most convincing element of this scam is that the extortion email has been crafted to look as if it were sent from your own email account. This helps convince the victim that they really have been infected by the RAT.
Analysis of the Bitcoin transactions associated with these sextortion email scams found that victims handed over Bitcoins in a short period of time, making it one of the more successful extortion emails seen.
RATs are real, and they’ve been spotted in all sorts of devices. But this scam is a pure hoax.
The scammers are simply spoofing the victim’s email address, which is easy to do, but which can be surprising and unsettling enough to scare a victim into paying. The extortionist’s email seems real, urgent and convincing.
Remember to Think before You Click!
Are you Safe? There are additional ways that we can protect you and your business. Call or email Covalime today.