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Phorpiex criminals spewing bulk sextortion e-mails from their botnet

 

Check Point the cyber-security company has said that its researchers were able to trace an origin from where sextortion e-mails recently were increasingly being sent to some hearty pal - the Phorpiex network of bots, whose other name is Trik. According to Check Point, starting April, they have observed the botnet execute several spam attacks having certain "sextortion" bait accompanying them. The assaults claim as containing the e-mail receiver's videos/images that have been compromised, thus asking for a ransom payment,

 

A report published in ZDNet states a few of the bulk mailing sextortion messages reached the zenith with 27m electronic mails during each attack, when certain Phorpiex-contaminated PCs spewed a maximum of 30,000 sextortion electronic mails every hour. Some 450,000 PCs have been contaminated with Phorpiex.

 

Within a span of 5 months, the sextortion campaigns of Phorpiex that Check Point tracked had victims who paid 14-and-more Bitcoins ($115K), the funds going to BTC addresses mentioned inside the messages. www.zdnet.com posted this, October 16, 2019.

 

A fairly simple mode of operation is used for the campaigns. The Phorpiex network of bots pulls down one database of electronic mail ids stored on certain command-and-control infrastructure. Thereafter, one message is crafted addressing a victim selected randomly utilizing general e-mail protocols, requesting that he pays up else be endangered with having his sexual images and/or videos exposed online. Along with this threat, there's also mention of the victim's password in the message, an attempt for making the spam mail increasingly convincing.

 

According to Alexey Bukhteyev, researcher at Check Point, those receiving the sextortion e-mails belong to various places globally, because the leaked credential databases, which Phorpiex uses, are like the databases compiled from 'Have I been Pwned?

 

An end-user not very savvy with PCs is likely to get scared with the e-mail. He may out of panic make the ransom payment so as not to be humiliated later. Similar as any spam campaign, Phorpiex is little worried about the high conversion prices. For, no matter if just one small percentage of victims is successfully duped with its e-mails, the Phorpiex criminals would earn good revenue.

 

» SPAMfighter News - 10/24/2019

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