Researchers at the email cybersecurity firm Mimecast have identified a brand new sextortion campaign, which is somewhat unconventional. Unlike the typical scams as it is targeting Google Nest home security camera owners and exploiting the common perception that IoT devices are generally unsecured.
Detected in the early half of January 2020, Mimecast revealed that a majority of the victims of this campaign are based in the USA and the footage that Nest cameras capture is used to blackmail the victim. The scammers force the victim to access different email accounts and URLs to get instructions after they demand a ransom.
Mimecast’s data science overwatch head Kiri Addison states that this time around scammers are using quite a complex methodology for hiding the origin of the scam emails and conceal their identities. Researchers claim that so far the around 1,700 emails (mostly in the US) have sent by scammers.
See: Creepy website shows live footage from 73,000 Private Security Cameras
In this campaign, attackers claim to have obtained compromising footages of the victim and if they didn’t pay the ransom, the footages will be released online. The difference between conventional sextortion campaigns and this one is that the victim has to go through a series of emails unti l they get to know how to pay for the ransom. ..
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