Cybercriminals are using yet another new twist on the old email phishing attack: they email people claiming to have infected porn sites with malware that allowed them to take over the recipient’s webcam and record them sitting at their computer watching porn and if they don’t pay up, the video is going public. I discuss this new method of attack in the video above.
For people who know they have never watched porn on their computers, this probably isn’t too effective. For everyone else, this threat of public shaming can be a powerful motivation to comply with the extortion demand.
This is another example of what I have often described as shame hacking, the use, or threatened use, of purportedly hacked data for embarrassing or extorting people by threatening to expose such compromising data if they do not comply with the demands made of them.
Shame hacking is one more way that cyber criminals have learned to monetize the fruits of their criminal actions and represents an increasing trend for how hacked information can and will be used for many ways. I have blogged about other cases where hackers have relied on shame hacking for profit.
Dallas / Fort Worth CBS News station in Dallas / Fort Worth did a story about this latest attack and invited Shawn Tuma on to explain more about it. See story here