Cyber-criminals Exploit Ashley Madison Victims to Extort Money

Brian Krebs Security Researcher for KrebsOnSecurity.com has said that extortionists are aiming attack on users of Ashley Madison after details about 32m clients subscribing to the infidelity website got leaked online when the hacker gang namely 'The Hacking Team' attacked it, reported itpro.co.uk dated August 24, 2015.

KrebsOnSecurity states that consumers who had their data filched during the July hack followed with its exposure online are receiving threatening e-mails from extortionists telling the victims' site membership would be exposed if they don't make payments as demanded.

According to Chief Cyber-Security Officer Tom Kellerman of Trend Micro, the above kind of extortion will keep on occurring, and may even evolve into profuse ransomware assaults. Gizmodo.com reported this, August 21, 2015.

Kellerman states that there'll arise one dramatic crime outbreak involving such kinds of virtual wringing while they will develop into targeted spear-phishing scams which will utilize crypto malicious programs.

Generally it's very scary for people about getting into career suicide or divorce because of the exposure of Ashley Madison user details, since the subscribers will most probably click persuasive appearing fraudulent e-mails from supposedly threatening/helpful entities. Scammers have anyway managed to trick people better and better into viewing electronic mails carrying malware. Spear-phishing assaults that are of more perilous kind, leverage personalized e-mails that recipients will possibly view, unknowingly letting malware infiltrate their computers.

This may mean one special problem facing IT-managers of government and corporate organizations, since plentiful of the electronic mail ids that subscribers to Ashley Madison provided had their origin in such networks. All domains contained within that subscriber series will get hit with the remarkable outbreak of spear-phishing assaults. Consequently, hackers may infiltrate military, government and corporate networks provided nobody does anything about keeping away those spam mails.

Phishing assaults have always relied on hot news while trying to fool ordinary end-users into responding to the day's tale, like when any catastrophe happens, phishers distribute electronic mails asking to donate. But the case is different with Ashley Madison because within it, the attackers get details of people along with a catch whereby the latter may become vulnerable to spear-phishing of the personalized kind.

» SPAMfighter News - 8/26/2015