Leesburg, Va. – August 5, 2019 – CofenseTM, the global leader in intelligent phishing defense solutions, today published a database of over 200 million compromised accounts being targeted by a large sextortion scam to ensure potential victims and their employers can address the threat of sextortion and prevent lost wages and productivity. Cofense Labs, the newly formalized research and development arm of Cofense, discovered a “for rent” botnet in June 2019 used primarily to send sextortion emails. The research team is monitoring the botnet’s activity on a daily basis to observe changes in the malware it is spreading as well as tracking new email addresses being targeted for sextortion phishing emails.
Sextortion is an email-based scam that relies on emotion-driven motivators such as fear and urgency to extort a ransom payment in return for the scammer’s commitment not to leak sensitive information. The method has become an increasingly pervasive threat, with Cofense Labs analysing over 7 million email addresses impacted by sextortion in the first half of 2019 alone. Cofense also assessed that more than $1.5M in payments were made to bitcoin wallets associated with sextortion campaigns this year. Poor password hygiene, including infrequent changes and reuse across multiple sites, add further credibility to sextortion threats being made.
“This botnet is not infecting computers to acquire new data sets – it is a true “spray and pray” attack reusing credentials culled from past data breaches to fuel legitimacy and panic through sextortion scams,” said Aaron Higbee, Cofense Co-Founder and CTO. “If your email address is found in a target list used by the botnet, it’s highly likely you will receive a sextortion email – if you haven’t already. We felt it was critical to get this informati ..
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