Hackers are using a new method of sexual blackmail. This is a new scam where hackers demand money from their victims by threatening to publish nude videos and photos collected from home cameras.
According to a security expert, it is a new version of the old-fashioned sextortion scam, where criminals try to convince victims that they have videos or information that they will release if the victims do not pay the ransom . The expert said that 1,600 scam emails were sent in just two days (from January 2 to January 3).
The scam begins with an email that says “we have some nude photos of you.” It also contains a link that leads to a page that shows a location being recorded by a Nest or other camera. Typically, the location shown is an area known to the victim (e.g., a coffee shop the victim visited last week). This is done to create the impression that the victim is being watched wherever they are, even outside their home.
One email read: "Think about what you've done in 11 months and imagine what we've seen. Your videos are currently uploaded to multiple porn sites and you only have a week until they're available to the public."
Criminals have managed to gain access to home cameras (e.g. Google's Nest cameras, Amazon's Ring cameras). In the past, they have used cameras that monitor/check on babies .
As is the case with most scams of this type, hackers usually use social engineering to cause panic in the victim and make them act immediately, without thinking much about it.
After the initial sexual blackmail email, the scammers ask the victim to follow a process and sign up with another email address, to (supposedly) receive more proof and information.
Along the way, they ask the victim to create a bitcoin wallet and pay around $500 in cryptocurrency to keep the nude photos and videos from being published. We still don't know how many people have fallen victim to this new scam.
According to the security expert , the photos and videos don't actually exist . It's a scam. The criminals have created a complex enough process so that the emails and the origin of the criminal's bitcoin wallet cannot be traced
Sex extortion scams are easy and cheap, which is why hackers prefer them.
In most cases of sexual blackmail, the victim simply receives an email that may contain stolen passwords from the victim's old email account, to convince them that data . In most cases, the criminals do not have access to the victim's information.
The scams typically target teenagers. In September, the FBI launched an initiative to combat this phenomenon.
Thousands of incidents have been recorded in the last two years, with total losses of $83 million.
