Threat Spotlight this Month - Phishing Email
I can't imagine that there is anyone who hasn't received one of these phishing emails. Whether it is the lawyer for a deposed leader of some third world country or the lawyer for one of your long lost relatives, that you never even knew you had. Maybe they need a place to park the vast fortune or your help with smuggling the money out of the third world hole it is in. Either way, their goal would be to get some kind of confidential information from you to allow them access to your vast fortune.
The latest of these I have been seeing, the guy just comes out and tells you he has hacked your email account. He supports this revelation by send the email for your own email account. He might even include some information the would really make you believe that you have been hacked. Then he goes on to tell you that he has been spying on you for quite some time and has even hacked the camera in you computer and recorded you doing something embarrassing while visiting some porn site. Then being the reasonable hacker that he is, he offers to delete all this information if you just sent him the quite fair amount of $700. He/she then gives you his bitcoin account info where you can send the money. All for your convenience.
This particular version, the person even explains how he has managed to stay under the radar of your antivirus software. So does this person actually have access to your email? Could he/she have made a video as described? The answer to these questions really lies right in the email itself.
So if the email included a password like this one did, was it actually your email password? If not then your email is probably safe. It is easy for someone to spoof your email address and make it appear that the email is from yourself. The email header would verify that info. If it is your email password then yes someone probably does have the ability to access your email and of course, you should immediately change your password. It doesn't necessarily mean you computer is corrupt with malware, but scan it anyway. If your antivirus is up to date, it should be able to detect any malicious activity. You can always try a second anti-malware program like MalwareBytes. Perhaps seek professional help to be sure that your system is clean. There are a lot of other ways that someone could get your email password, but most involve some type of phishing. Even more likely, if you use the same password for everything, is that you entered the password into some website that was compromised and this person is assuming you are one of the, I don't know, maybe billions of people that use the same password for everything. I mean who can remember a password for every little site right? Ok, one should always resist the urge to do that, right?
As far as the video he/she is claiming to have, I would think that if this was true, they would have send at least an excerpt of the video or a still frame from the video to prove it's existence. The fact that they didn't probably assures that it doesn't exist.
Anyway, that's all I have for you today. So, safe surfing until next time.
