New sextortion emails threaten to expose users’ intimate activities

• The emails falsely claim that the sender possesses recordings of users' intimate activities from their webcam which was compromised while visiting adult sites.
• The scammers demand a $2000 payment in bitcoins.

A new sextortion email campaign is slowly making rounds targeting gullible users. The emails reportedly contain a brief message asking victims to make a large payment, failing which, the scammers would expose their ‘intimate activity’ during their so-called visit to adult websites. The message goes on to claim that the webcams of the recipients was compromised to secretly record their activity.

The big picture

• The emails feature a subject line like ‘This is my final warning’, followed by a brief threatening message.
• It demands the recipients’ to send a $2000 payment in bitcoins to a specific bitcoin address mentioned at the end.
• If recipients fail to follow up with the payment, then their private video would be sent to all the contacts in their mailing lists as per the threat.

Nothing but a scam

Some security researchers who analyzed this sextortion email have concluded that they were merely scams. In addition, these emails never recorded any video as highlighted in the mail. Users are advised to delete these phony emails as soon as they receive them.

Malicious URLs

A tweet by My Online Security listed the following URLs which are believed to be the source of the sextortion campaign.

• 4n0nym0u5h4ck3d[.]ml
• 4n0nym0u5h4ck3d[.]cf
• 4n0nym0u5h4ck3d[.]ga
• 4n0nym0u5h4ck5[.]ga
• 4n0nym0u5h4ck3d[.]tk