There is a “sextortion” email making the rounds at the moment and with many personnel and students still working andstudying from home, many are concerned about the risks.
“The device has been successfully hacked” is a new ‘sextortion’ email scam for 2021. This email scam, like most sextortion scams, relies on “social engineering”, a process through which the scammers induce shame, panic or guilt. The scammers (the authors of the email) claim that they obtained material compromising the user (because of a computer hack, email account hack, router hack, etc) and threaten to publish it if the ransom is not paid. None these claims are true in any way; they are just deception.
The “The device has been successfully hacked” email message says that someone successfully hacked the recipient’s device and monitored it for a long time. The hacker claims that this was made possible by a virus installed on the device when the user visited the adult site. Using this virus, the hacker was able to record a video that compromises the user, and gained access to the user’s personal contacts, instant messengers, and social networks. If the recipient pays $1300 in Bitcoin, the hacker promises to delete all the data. Next, the scam email contains the bitcoin address to which the ransom should be transferred. This email is just a sextortion scam, and all the statements are fake.
What to do when you receive the “The device has been successfully hacked” SCAM:
- Do not panic.
- Do not pay a ransom.
- If there’s a link in the scam email, do not click it, otherwise you might unwittingly install malware or ransomware on your computer.
The mail will come from several e-mail addresses, which might very from user to user. Scammers use thousands of “throw-away” e-mail addresses to send out these scams.
If you do get such an e-mail use one of the two methods below to report it to IT Cyber Security as soon as possible. This way IT can filter and block the senders
By reporting it on the ICT Partner Portal.
Go to https://servicedesk.sun.ac.za/jira/servicedesk/customer/portal/6/create/115.
Fill in your information and add the email as an attachment. Your request will automatically be logged on the system.
If you have accidentally responded to the phisher and already provided them with your personal details, it is vitally important that you immediately go to the USERADM page (either http://www.sun.ac.za/password or www.sun.ac.za/useradm and change your password immediately.)
Make sure the new password is completely different and is a strong password that will not be easily guessed, as well as changing the passwords on your social media and private e-mail accounts, especially if you use the same passwords on these accounts. Contact the IT HelpDesk if you are still unsure.
[ARTICLE BY DAVID WILES]
This entry was posted
on Monday, February 1st, 2021 at 8:37 am and is filed under E-mail, News, Security.
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