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Showing posts with label Sextortion Scam. Show all posts

Australian Hacker Charged for Spyware Creation Used by Pedophiles

An Australian citizen, Wayne Jacob John Keen, age 24, has been accused of allegedly participating in the development and distribution of malware used by pedophiles and domestic violence offenders.

A type of malware, Remote Access Trojan gives hackers complete remote control over an infected device, enabling them to run programs, log keystrokes, exploit files and data, install other programs, take screenshots, and even record video from the webcam. 

The offender is alleged to have developed the remote access trojan (RAT) when he was 15 years old and served as the tool's administrator from 2013 until the government shut it down in 2019.

Malware Execution

In 2019, authorities were able to identify the creator of an IM RAT who goes by the online handle 'Shockwave' as per a cybersecurity firm. Palo Alto Networks reported that it had seen more than 115,000 IM RAT attacks targeted solely at its clients. More than 65,000 samples of the infection were gathered by the security firm.

Advertised as a reliable tool for remote administration, IM RAT has a lifetime license price range of $25 to $100. Its touted features were remote control of Windows servers, remote support, staff monitoring, and remote connections to personal or business computers.

According to the AFP, "The hacker illegally sold the malware to more than 14,500 people in 128 different countries.PayPal users from Australia who purchased IM RAT are identified as respondents on domestic violence orders in a statistically large portion (14.2%) of cases. Additionally, one of these buyers is listed on the Child Sex Offender Register ." 

The federal authorities added that the developer has earned between $300,000 and $400,000 since the business began operating in 2013. These funds mainly were used to pay for food deliveries and buy 'other consumable and disposable products.'

A 42-year-old woman who lives in the same home as the accused is identified by The Guardian as the perpetrator's mother and has also been charged with 'dealing with the proceeds of crime.'

In coordination with more than a dozen European law enforcement agencies, 85 search warrants were issued globally as part of the operation, which resulted in the seizure of 434 devices and the detention of 13 people for utilizing the malware for evil.


Email extortionists threatening to release your sex tape









Scammers are circulating a new email scam campaign claiming that hey have a sex tape of you, and if you do not send them a $1,500 in bitcoins they will release it.

The extortion email sent states that the extortionists had intercourse with you a long time ago and had secretly recorded everything, apart from that they even stole all your passwords and contact lists while you were in the bathroom.

The email further specify that they will delete everything about you once you send them $1,500 in bitcoins, and will never hear from them again.

But, the receiver of this mail should not worry, as it is just a scam and the senders do not have any tape sex tape of you.  Therefore, you should not send them any money or be worried that it is true.


Surprised? 

I have yet another surprise for you, our intercourse video. 

Yes, you read it right. We had intercourse quite a long time back, and I recorded a video of it. Not just the video, I even saved all your passwords, contact lists and everything. I did all of this when you were in the bathroom, trying to clean yourself. 

Trust me, I can fcuk up your life if I want to. 

I am not an evil individual, it's just that, I need some money and I am certain you can help me with it. 

So here is the non-negotiable deal. You send me $1500, and I will delete everything I have about you. You will not ever ever hear from me. 

Send the money to my bitcoin (BTC) address. Search Google (How to buy bitcoin), if you do not know how to send bitcoin. 

Address: 
[id]

Darling, the address is case-sensitive, so it is better to copy and paste it. 

If I do not get the bitcoins within one day, I promise, I will: 

1. Send our intercourse video to all of your contacts. 
2. I will leave our intercourse DVD to your neighbors (I know where you reside), and a copy for your nice family as well. 
3. I will NOT let you live your life, as simple as that. I will keep coming back. 

For the apparent reason, I can not tell you my personal name, but yes, I can tell you one thing that, it was a long, long time back darling.

According to the BleepingComputer, the bitcoin address associated with the above email had not received any payments as of today.  

Unfortunately, the bitcoin address cannot be provided due to privacy concern of the person who shared the email. 

Sextortion Scams At a Rise Yet Again; Now Leading To Ransomware



In the recent times the sextortion email scams have been at a high rise as they have proved time and time again to being quite a significant and effective method for producing easy money for the hoodlums. A sextortion scam is basically when an individual receives an email stating that they have been spied upon while they were browsing adult websites.

The sextortion campaign which traps recipients into installing the Azorult data stealing Trojan, then further downloading and installing the GandCrab ransomware is in the highlight now.

The first infection, Azorult, will be utilized to steal data from the user's PC, for example, account logins, cookies, documents, chat history, and that's just the beginning. At that point it installs the GandCrab Ransomware, which will encrypt the computer's information.

There have been numerous cases of such scams being accounted for generally where the emails may likewise contain passwords of the users that were leaked amid information breaches so as to make the scams look progressively genuine.

Experts at ProofPoint detected another campaign that as opposed to containing a bitcoin addresses to send a blackmail payment to prompts the user to download a video they made of them indulging in certain "exercises". The downloaded compress document, however, contains an executable that will further install the malware onto the computer.

"However, this week Proofpoint researchers observed a sextortion campaign that also included URLs linking to AZORult stealer that ultimately led to infection with GandCrab ransomware," stated ProofPoint's research.

The downloaded documents will be named like Foto_Client89661_01.zip and the full text of the sextortion trick email is below:




This new strategy is turned out to be significantly hazardous, as when the recipients are already terrified with the need to affirm if a video exists. They download the document, endeavor to open the compressed file, and thusly find themselves infected with two distinct sorts of malware.

Consequently, it is recommended for the user's to not believe anything they receive via email from a strange address and rather do a few inquiries on the Web to check whether others have experienced emails this way or not.