masses are the sorry . An strange number of assholesare threatening to discover Ashley Madison users , presumably ruining their marriages . The hack dupe must ante up the extortionist “ exactly 1.0000001 Bitcoins ” or the better half gets advise . Ugh .
This is an redoubtable but not irregular crook of issue . The datum that the Ashley Madison hackersreleased early on this weekincluded millions of real email address , along with real base address , intimate proclivities and other very private selective information . surety blogger Brian Krebs babble to security measure firms who have grounds of extortion schemes linked to Ashley Madison data . Turns out spam filter are catching a number of email being sent to victims from mass who say they ’ll make the info public unless they get pay off !
Here ’s one becharm byan email provider in Milwaukee :
Hello ,
Unfortunately , your data was leaked in the recent hacking of Ashley Madison and I now have your data .
If you would care to prevent me from finding and sharing this information with your significant other send exactly 1.0000001 Bitcoins ( approx . time value $ 225 USD ) to the following name and address :
1B8eH7HR87vbVbMzX4gk9nYyus3KnXs4Ez
Sending the wrong amount means I wo n’t know it ’s you who paid .
You have 7 days from receipt of this email to send the BTC [ bitcoins ] . If you need help locating a place to purchase BTC , you could start here … ..
The above email was forwarded to Brian Krebs who point out thatno bitcoins have been added that walletyet . ( Looks like the Milwaukee - base dupe did not give up . )
One security system expert explained to Krebs that this type of extortion could be serious . “ There is die to be a spectacular crime wave of these type of virtual shakedowns , and they ’ll evolve into spear - phishing campaigns that leverage crypto malware , ” said Tom Kellerman of Trend Micro .
That sounds a little striking , but bear in intellect just how many people were involved . Even if you acquire some of the invoice were bogus , thereare potentially millionswho’ve had their private information posted on the glum web for anybody to see and abuse . Some of these people are in the armed forces , too , where they ’d face possible penalties for adultery . If some goons recollect they can compact a bitcoin out of each of them , there are potentially tens of meg of dollar mark to be made .
The word “ potentially ” is important because some of these extortion emails are obviously getting stuck in spam filters , and some of the extortionists could easy just be bluffing . Either way , everybody loses when companies fail to secure their user ’ data . Everybody except the felon .
[ Krebs on security system ]
Ashley MadisonCrimeHacksSecurity
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