Sextortion against Ring and Nest home security camera owners increases
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A report published by cybersecurity firm Mimecast details a new sextortion campaign against users of some Internet of Things (IoT) devices, specifically the Google Nest and Ring home security systems. The report indicates that nearly 2,000 fraud attempts have already been detected in the US during the first days of January 2020.
Kiri Addison, the firm’s director of data science,
mentions that while this appears to be an ordinary extortion campaign, it has
some distinctive features, such as the use of obfuscation methods to hide the
origin of emails which complicates the identification of attempted extortion
even for users familiar with cybersecurity issues.
Like other sextortion
campaigns, attackers send emails to victims claiming they have compromising footage
that will be revealed unless a payment is made. The first message the victim
receives only mentions the threat from hackers and does not contain details of
any Bitcoin online wallet or other cryptocurrency to send the payment.
Instead of receiving the information to make
the payment, victims receive the login credentials to access the external email
account where the alleged compromising footage is located, which is legitimate
content directly downloaded from the Nest website.”Hackers make victims
believe that the videos found in this email account were extracted from their
devices,” says the cybersecurity expert.
The attack does not end there; after that, the
victim also receives the access keys to a third email account, where the
hackers place the threat, claiming that the compromising video will be posted
the following week unless a payment of £500 is made in
Bitcoin or through gift cards for stores like Amazon or iTunes.
Specialists from the International Institute of
Cyber Security (IICS) claim that this group of attackers takes advantage of the
growing number of hacking reports against such devices, as most users of IoT
devices currently know the security risks when using these devices. On the
other hand, Addison agrees with such a statement: “With so many recently
reported security incidents, it’s really easy to convince a user that their
security cameras were hacked,” the specialist concludes.
He is a well-known expert in mobile security and malware analysis. He studied Computer Science at NYU and started working as a cyber security analyst in 2003. He is actively working as an anti-malware expert. He also worked for security companies like Kaspersky Lab. His everyday job includes researching about new malware and cyber security incidents. Also he has deep level of knowledge in mobile security and mobile vulnerabilities.
Gloss