The victims are blackmailed with an e-mail sent from their own account. This is a form of usurpation called spoofing.

It was reported by Telemedellín that Colombian police authorities were warning of a type of fraud in which attackers request a ransom in Bitcoin (BTC) in exchange for not revealing personal information allegedly hijacked to their victims.

The most striking thing about the scam is that the victims receive an e-mail from their own account. The complaint is made by the Citizen Security operations officer for the town of Valle de Aburrá, Colonel Iván Santamaría.

According to Santamaría, this type of practice is known as spoofing, a form of identity theft in electronic communications. However, attackers do not take control of the access to their victims’ e-mail accounts, but have the ability to send messages from any account. The victims, upon receiving the threatening e-mail from their own account, consider that their data are effectively compromised.

In the e-mails to which the Colombian officer refers, the victim is requested to pay a ransom in Bitcoin equivalent to EUR 500. Additionally, in the said e-mails the attacker credits himself with the hijacking of personal data of the affected party, who receives a Bitcoin address for sending the funds and a deadline of 30 hours to do so.

Colombia and Computer Crimes

The same report by Telemedellín states that the incidence of computer crimes in Valle de Aburrá has decreased by 50% so far in 2019, compared to the previous year, according to local police sources.

However, there are not few computer crimes in Colombia, according to the study Trends in Cybercrime in Colombia 2019-2020, conducted by entities of the Colombian Chamber of Information Technology and Telecommunications (CCIT) and the Center for Capabilities for Cybersecurity of Colombia (C4) of Colombian National Police.

In that document, it is mentioned that there have been more than 28,000 computer crimes against businesses this year. There have been more than 52,000 incidents of that type since 2017, according to the same study. It should be noted that at least 8,000 of these correspond to crimes of identity theft.

Spoofing with Payments in Bitcoin

In early November, a publication in the Spanish media Público gave an account of such practice. Additionally, the text mentions that that practice is not new and that it involves more than just requesting ransom in Bitcoin.

In that article, the same spoofing is mentioned in a message that might follow the one mentioned in the Colombian environment. In the e-mail cited in that note, a payment already made by the victim is mentioned. However, the attacker claims that the amount does not correspond to the one requested.

In addition, a different Bitcoin address and a new 24-hour payment deadline are provided in the new e-mail. The address cited in that text has not received transactions, at the time of writing this article.

Another prominent background was the scam to Uphold users in November 2018. Regarding Black Friday offers, users of that platform received an e-mail from Uphold’s account offering a refund of 15% of the funds that they had in their accounts.

Although Uphold reported that it was a fraud, after its email service was compromised, the address indicated by the scammers received up to 0.53742844 BTC. At the time of the fraud, that figure was equivalent to about USD 2,400. Now, the same figure exceeds USD 3,600.

By Willmen Blanco

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