Amy Martyn reports:
While you were watching adult videos on the internet, a hacker who collects Bitcoin was secretly recording a double-screened video, and he’s now preparing to send it to your family and coworkers.
No, not really. But hackers are using stolen passwords to convince strangers online that that’s the case. In emails to unsuspecting victims, the hackers claim that they placed malware on pornography sites to make secret recordings of both the visitor and the site.
The hackers begin the emails by referencing a password linked to one of the recipients’ other accounts in order to convince their victims that they have more information than they really do.
The emails come with a demand for several thousand dollars in Bitcoin, instructions of how to pay, and a threat that the video will be sent to all of the victims’ contacts if they do not pay by a given deadline.
Read more on Consumer Affairs. This is exactly the kind of scam that I had noted on this blog two weeks ago with a sample extortion message.
It’s important to keep in mind that almost everyone has had their login credentials to at least one site breached by now, so the scammers could be able to tell you a password of yours that they had obtained from an older data dump that is still circulating on leak sites or forums. The fact that they have what was a legitimate password of yours, however, does not mean that they infected your system, got videos of you, etc. etc. Don’t panic if you get one of the extortion demands. But do report the scammers to the FBI. You can use their online complaint form at https://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx .
Go ahead. My wife was watching with me.