Sextortion Rears Its Ugly Head Again

A new French-language sextortion marketing campaign is generating the rounds, scientists warn.

As observed by Sophos researchers in a Monday report, sextortion is just one of the oldest methods in the e-book, but its attractiveness has waned in latest years owing to effective cybersecurity, law enforcement crackdowns and the increase of ransomware.

This new marketing campaign is one particular sign of what might be a resurgence, they stated.

Threats Sandwich Malware One-way links

The new French-language attack entails a blind email blast, demonstrated below, with unsubstantiated claims of video clip proof and so on. It cites France’s authorized penalties for viewing illegal pornography, then tells the reader: “If you wish, you may perhaps reply to the address down below to clarify away your steps, so that we can examine your explanation and decide if fees really should be brought. You have a rigid deadline of 72 hours.”

Ought to the reader not comply, “we will are [sic] obliged to deliver our report to the Public Prosecutor to issue an arrest warrant against you. We will proceed to have you arrested by the police closest to your area of residence.”

Notably, the destructive email is made up of no plaintext or hyperlinks. In its place, its text is shown in an graphic file.

Attackers use hyperlinks to trick unwitting victims into downloading malware or viewing destructive webpages. As Sophos explains, “Adding an picture that retains the contact-to-motion text clearly tends to make it more durable for a receiver to reply, for the reason that a basic graphic can not have clickable hyperlinks, or even textual content that can be copied and pasted.”

But, as Mike Parkin – senior specialized engineer at Vulcan Cyber – explained to Threatpost through email, “The point that most frauds conclude up in our junk mail folder displays how effective email filters have develop into, which is why they appear to alternate procedures like embedded PDFs or pictures somewhat than uncooked textual content or HTML that is quick for the filters to analyze.”

What is Sextortion?

Sextortion is a kind of blackmail in which a malicious actor claims to possess evidence of sexual misbehavior from their victim. The attacker needs payment in trade for not spreading the compromising details or visuals.

At times, these campaigns can merge with botnets, ransomware and other strategies of cyber attack to form a strong cocktail. Nevertheless, as prior attacks have revealed, sextortion tends to be rudimentary: This sort of attacks aren’t specific. Somewhat, they entail blind email blasts that prey on victims’ panic, with no any actual evidence of sexual impropriety to again them up.

Sextortion is on the Increase Once more

“Scams appear to operate in cycles,” notes Parkin. “Whether it is a Prince from Nigeria, uncollected assets, scam target payment, extortion above adult internet websites you did not take a look at, or what ever. Scammers will use one for a although, then shift to something else when they quit finding responses. Ultimately, they’ll circle back again to an previous fraud that may perhaps have been up to date with new textual content or a new graphic.”

Lionel Sigal, CTI at CYE, informed Threatpost by using email that sextortion has a short while ago been skyrocketing “Sextortion attempts (actual and phony) concentrating on executives of organizations have improved by 800% in the last 4 months,” he explained.

Strategies concentrating on standard individuals are also spiking: The FBI’s Internet Criminal offense Criticism Center obtained additional than 16,000 sextortion issues in only the initially 7 months of 2021.

Will this previous-hat method of cyber attack demonstrate powerful? “It’s also early to inform what the strike rate is on this approach,” Casey Ellis, Founder and CTO of Bugcrowd, explained to Threatpost through email, “but it feels to me like a pivot that men and women would slide for. If a fraud has a consider of $500 and it prices 1 cent to send out an email, you only have to link 1 in 50,000 situations for the fraud to break even.”

To Parkin, “the best defense is solid consumer schooling. No make any difference how thriving an attacker is at getting previous the filters, their attack can only succeed if the goal falls for it and takes the bait.”

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