{"id":14435,"date":"2020-04-28T10:37:55","date_gmt":"2020-04-28T08:37:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/it\/?p=14435"},"modified":"2020-05-12T12:24:53","modified_gmt":"2020-05-12T10:24:53","slug":"sextortion-phishing-scams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/it\/2020\/04\/sextortion-phishing-scams\/","title":{"rendered":"[:en]\u201cSextortion\u201d scams[:]"},"content":{"rendered":"

[:en]<\/p>\n

There has been a resurgence of \u201csextortion\u201d phishing scams recently but with a slight twist.<\/p>\n

\u201cExtortion phishing\u201d or \u201csextortion\u201d is an aggressive form of a phishing attack that targets potential victims in an e-mail demanding bitcoin in exchange for a promise of non-disclosure of an alleged sexual offence.<\/p>\n

The aim of these sextortion e-mails is clear \u2013 to force their intended victims to pay up for their silence, or the footage will be shared on social networks. Ultimately this is a typically insidious scam that could easily snare an unsuspecting user.<\/p>\n

This variant however has an added twist, in that the phishing scammers are displaying a stolen password (from other websites) that their victims use, to grab their victim\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n

It is usually those other websites (e,g,. hotmail, Instagram, Paycity or Facebook) that hackers use to gain access to our data, so changing those passwords are very important.<\/p>\n

As in the example below we received earlier this week:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Several students and personnel say that they have also received similar phishing e-mails, and that password that they had used were displayed in the subject line. They were all concerned that their network account was under attack.<\/p>\n

If you receive such a mail, there is little danger to you UNLESS you<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. respond to the sender<\/li>\n
  2. still use that same password for other non-university accounts and use a variation of that password.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    If it is an old password that they are displaying, then the danger to you is relatively small, but if you are still using it on a different website or application please change and update immediately.<\/p>\n

    [ARTICLE BY DAVID WILES]<\/p>\n

    [:]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    [:en] There has been a resurgence of \u201csextortion\u201d phishing scams recently but with a slight twist. \u201cExtortion phishing\u201d or \u201csextortion\u201d is an aggressive form of a phishing attack that targets potential victims in an e-mail demanding bitcoin in exchange for a promise of non-disclosure of an alleged sexual offence. The aim of these sextortion e-mails […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":259,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20382,29187],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-email","category-security-2"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 00:03:36","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/259"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14435"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14454,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14435\/revisions\/14454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}