Experts of the antivirus company ESET have detected a massive spam attack targeting visitors to porn sites from Russia, the USA, Germany, France, Spain and the Czech Republic. Fraudsters extort bitcoins from users under the threat of publishing a video that they allegedly managed to record via the victim’s webcam while watching porn.

Extortionists threaten to send a compromising record to the list of contacts if they do not receive a ransom in the amount of 0.45 BTC (about 150 thousand rubles) within 48 hours.

The blackmailers can accompany their threats by imitating the sending of letters from the victim's mailing address, or include in the text of the letter the real username and password of the user obtained as a result of leaks of personal data.

“The attacks on consumers of pornocontent with the help of social engineering deprive the victim of critical thinking and she is sure that her webcam was really hacked,” experts say ESET.

They advise users to use an antivirus with the function of protecting the webcam from hacking, and if the attacker has specified their login or password, change them and activate the two-factor authentication function.

Recall that in January, the Chinese Bitcoin miners discovered a new virus in one of the firmware for overclocking the hardware, aimed at attacking Antminer devices from Bitmain.

For some time, the virus imperceptibly replaces the address for bitcoin mining, and then extorts bitcoins from ASIC owners under the threat of overheating of the device and its failure.

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