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FBI Unfolds a Hacker’s Game of Extortion

The FBI's Federal Cyber Investigators for the Los Angeles state, during June 2010, detained a man, aged 31, from California following an investigation, spanning 2 years, against him under the accusation that he indulged in "sextortion."

Using what is known as 'spear phishing,' the hacker allegedly inserted malware into his victims' PCs so that he could contaminate and control those systems. Thereafter, he tried to find if there were any explicit pictures on the said systems. If so, he downloaded them as well as utilized them for extracting more images and films from the same.

In one instance, the hacker included one victim's porn image to an e-mail as an attachment and threatened her to send her video showing herself in sexually explicit poses otherwise her parents would be told about the images he'd obtained from her PC.

Furthermore, in many more cases, the hacker, on the Net, pretending to be the sister or friend of young girls dispatched e-mails having attachments and offered to show the victims a frightening movie. Since the e-mails seemed as coming from someone reliable, the victims viewed the attachments without giving second thoughts. And once viewed, a virus got installed onto their computers that gave the hacker full control of the systems, including every folder, file, microphone and webcam.

Worryingly, the hacker managed to victimize over 200 young girls, who now understand what it means to be overly trusting while surfing on the websites for social networking.

Remarking about the incident, Jeff Kirkpatrick, one cyber-investigator in the Los Angeles squad and special agent of FBI stated that the scary part of the case was the way the hacker easily compromised the PCs of the victims. Blastmagazine.com published this on November 2, 2010.

Furthermore, the Federal Bureau of Investigation investigators remarked that though exploiting the girls sexually was the motive of the hacker, privacy matters included every sphere of security and personal information. And while initially virtual stalking was carried out as fun in the virtual environment, it had currently become an online threat serious enough to be dealt with firmly following its notice by federal authorities already.

Related article: FBI’s ICCC Annual Report Discusses Fraudulent and Non-Fraudulent Complaints

» SPAMfighter News - 11/11/2010

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