Microsoft 365 Admin portal abused to send sextortion emails

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

Content source

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/microsoft-365-admin-portal-abused-to-send-sextortion-emails/

The Microsoft 365 Admin Portal is being abused to send sextortion emails, making the messages appear trustworthy and bypassing email security platforms.

Sextortion emails are scams claiming that your computer or mobile device was hacked to steal images or videos of you performing sexual acts. The scammers then demand from you a payment of $500 to $5,000 to prevent them from sharing the compromising photos with your family and friends.

While you would think no one could fall for these scams, they were very profitable when they first appeared in 2018, generating over $50,000 a week. To this day, BleepingComputer continues to receive messages from people concerned after receiving them.

Since then, scammers have created numerous variants of extortion email scams, including ones that pretend to have caught your spouse cheating or include pictures of your home to scare you into paying the extortionist in Bitcoin.

However, email security platforms have become good at detecting these scam emails and typically quarantine them in the spam folder.

Over the past week, people on LinkedIn, X, and the Microsoft Answers forum reported receiving sextortion emails through the Microsoft 365 Message Center, allowing the scams to bypass spam filters and land in the inbox.

Thankfully, sextortion scams have become so abundant over the past six years that most people realize that they are scams and delete these types of emails.

However, for those not familiar, these emails can be distressing and scary.

Therefore, it is important to stress that these emails are scams, they are not telling the truth, and you should not visit any links in these emails or send any money to the listed cryptocurrency addresses.

Microsoft 365 Admin portal abused to send sextortion emails

The Microsoft 365 Admin Portal is being abused to send sextortion emails, making the emails appear trustworthy and bypassing email security platforms.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

 

[Sorrento]

I've had a coupe this last couple of months supposedly they have access to my web cam & me being on dubious sites - The threat is to share this info with all my social media sites etc - However amusingly I never use a web cam & have no social media, but this could scare or frighten those not educated about internet extortion perhaps destroying their mental health, maybe more - Scum of the earth are those that do this.