Malware Uses Your PC to Send 30K Sextortion Emails Per Hour

[silversurfer]

Content source

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/malware-uses-your-pc-to-send-30k-sextortion-emails-per-hour/

In a new report by Check Point Research, researchers show how the Phorpiex botnet is being used to distribute millions of sextortion emails and are generating a tidy sum doing so.

The almost decade old Phorpiex botnet, otherwise known as Trik, is a worm that spreads via email. Once a machine is infected, the malware will download further malware onto an infected computer or perform other malicious activity, such as using the computer to send spam.

Check Point Research has recently discovered that Phorpiex has added a new payload that acts as a spam bot to distribute sextortion emails.
"The spam bot is one of the final payloads in each Phorpiex campaign observed in 2019," the researchers stated in their report. "The Phorpiex spam bot doesn’t have its own persistence mechanism, as it is downloaded and executed by other Phorpiex modules."

Malware Uses Your PC to Send 30K Sextortion Emails Per Hour

Sextortion emails stating that your computer was hacked and video was created of you on porn sites have become so common that they are treated simply as another spam. That does not mean, though, that they are not profitable as a new report shows attackers are generating revenue by utilizing...

www.bleepingcomputer.com

 

[upnorth]

Since April 2019, the researchers monitored 74 bitcoin addresses and have seen a total of 157 payments totaling 11.99545 bitcoins. This comes out to approximately to $95,721.89 USD, or $16K per month, at today's prices over a period of 6 months.