Sextortion Scam Uses Recipient’s Hacked Passwords
Summary: A sextortion email scam now opens by quoting a real password previously tied to the recipient's email address, then claims a webcam video was recorded and demands a Bitcoin payment, typically $1,400, within 24 hours. KrebsOnSecurity heard from three readers in 72 hours who confirmed the password was genuine but roughly ten years old and not used on their current computers, suggesting the scam draws on credentials from a breach more than a decade old.
What's compelling: A decade-old password pulled from a breach is enough to make a mass-mailed extortion demand land as credible, and the article notes password lookup services already index billions of stolen username and password pairs for scammers to draw on.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
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