Watch out for this Bitcoin Scammer

Posted: 2019-01-01
By: dwirch
Viewed: 429

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Every day, there is someone out there that is trying to seperate you from your hard-earned money. This particular scam is especially effective.

I got the following email this morning, which appeared to be from me. Normally, I'd just mark it as junk, and forget about it. However, this particular email is using an email address that I only use for job searching, which is not happening at this time. The text of the email is as folows:

From:
Tue 2019-01-01, 03:46
To:
Subject: was under attack! Change your access data!

Hello!

As you may have noticed, I sent you an email from your account.
This means that I have full access to your account.

I've been watching you for a few months now.
The fact is that you were infected with malware through an adult site that you visited.

If you are not familiar with this, I will explain.
Trojan Virus gives me full access and control over a computer or other device.
This means that I can see everything on your screen, turn on the camera and microphone, but you do not know about it.

I also have access to all your contacts and all your correspondence.

Why your antivirus did not detect malware?
Answer: My malware uses the driver, I update its signatures every 4 hours so that your antivirus is silent.

I made a video showing how you satisfy yourself in the left half of the screen, and in the right half you see the video that you watched.
With one click of the mouse, I can send this video to all your emails and contacts on social networks. I can also post access to all your e-mail correspondence and messengers that you use.

If you want to prevent this, transfer the amount of $550 to my bitcoin address (if you do not know how to do this, write to Google: “Buy Bitcoin”).

My bitcoin address (BTC Wallet) is: 18eBGkYam1wjz1S77jz3VmADuYYFzhA3vB

After receiving the payment, I will delete the video and you will never hear me again.
I give you 48 hours to pay.
I have a notice reading this letter, and the timer will work when you see this letter.

Filing a complaint somewhere does not make sense because this email cannot be tracked like my bitcoin address.
I do not make any mistakes.
If I find that you have shared this message with someone else, the video will be immediately distributed.

Best wishes!

We've all heard the sob stories of people who have been contacted by someone, and convinced to perform dubious acts on camera. Poor bastards actually do it, and the extortionist records the evidence, and threatens to release it to the victims Facebook friends, etc. Sad situation.

However, there are couple of things that really stand out to mark this particular would-be scammer as a poor attempt at extortion:

The email mentioned in the header and subject is rarely used. It was most likely picked up from stale data on a job site somewhere. It doesn't even have a home on my current computer, much less a contact list. A quick search of the bitcoin address shows that it is indeed in use by a scammer, and has been reported a number of times. I don't have a webcam connected to my computer, so it would be kind of hard for someone to record me doing questionable things.

The scammer also mentions that a "timer" will start when I have read this email. That means the email would have to have some kind of embedded script or one pixel gif or something to track when I opened the email. In other words, it would have to have a way to "phone home" to let the scammer know that the message had been opened. Either by actively sending a message of some sort, or downloading something from a remote server. In the case of the latter, the scammer would have to have a unique way of identifying the victim. Starting to see the problem?

This post isn't meant to point any one person, or make fun of anyones tastes or habits. To each his own, and I don't care what you do in the privacy of your own home.

Rather, this is meant to be a warning for this particular extortion attempt. Don't just blindly send money to some random bitcoin address just because you got a scary email.

If you do get an email like this, research it if you're worried. Use your favorite search engine to look for the bitcoin address. I found the one mentioned above in both Bing and Google. Take stock of your actions. Did you actually get on cam with someone? Did they seem a bit too eager to get your clothes off? Did they suddenly disappear, and you go a blackmail message a few minutes later? You might truly be a victim. Go and grab a copy of Malware Bytes Anti Malware (MBAM), and restart in safe mode, and scan your box. See if you truly do have a nasty backdoor on it.

If you really must go and look at adult websites (I'm not judging!), use some common sense.

Don't use an email address that you would normally use to register on an adult website. Make a throwaway at your choice of many different providers.
Use an anonymizing proxy service. There are lots of good ones out there, and they do a good job of hiding where you are coming from. To the far end, it may look like you are in France, but in reality you're in Dallas, TX.
Use a virtual machine to surf adult sites. If you can't do that, at least use Incognito mode in Chrome, or InPrivate mode in Edge.
Keep your antivirus and/or antimalware apps up to date, and do regular scans.
Enable two-factor authentication on email or other accounts. This will send an alert to your phone to approve the sign in to your email service. If you decline, the scammer is stopped from accessing your mailbox.
In the words of Joshua, "The only winning move is not to play."

Let's be careful out there, people.

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