#Cyber extortion definition how to#

So first, determine if the threat is credible. Like mentioned before, sometimes attackers bluff in the hope the victim might panic.

#Cyber extortion definition how to#

How to deal with Cyber Extortionĭetermine whether the threat is credible. A threat is made to reveal the material to the victim’s friends and loved ones. We also deal with many cases where an ex extorts their former partner with sexual images or videos. Or they will hack into someone’s device, use malware, and get access to the files, webcam, and microphone without the victim knowing it. They are present in chat rooms and webcam sites to record people who post or live-stream sexually explicit images and videos. With sextortion, the attacker will often pretend to be someone else to gain the trust of the victim. SextortionĪnother common threat is that the attacker obtains (or pretends to have obtained) private sexual material from your device or webcam. Sometimes the cybercriminal relies on this panic alone and makes money from just the threat of a DDoS attack. Because of this, it is likely that most cybercriminals look for victims who panic because they can’t access their systems and pay quickly. However, open-source reporting suggests that if the victim does not pay the ransom, the long-term crippling DDoS attacks do not last for long periods of time. This attack will only stop if the victim pays up. In DDoS attacks, a network of infected computer systems is used to send a surge of internet traffic to bring down a website, server, or system. Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks Threats of revealing personal information are sometimes real, but attackers also use bluff.

Someone can gather sensitive and personal information from email, webcam, other third party sites that have your personal information on file. The victim has to pay in some form of currency, often bitcoin, within a short amount of time. With email-based extortion, the attacker threatens to reveal the victim’s sensitive and personal information to their social media contacts, family, and friends, unless the victims pay. Email-Based ExtortionĪnother way that cyber extortion occurs is via email-based ransom demands. The payment demands are often between $200 and $1,000 because cybercriminals know that by keeping ransom demands small and building a reputation for handing over decryption/access keys consistently, they can make up to tens of thousands of dollars each month. Ransomware victims are, in most cases, demanded to pay the money in bitcoin, although other currencies, gift cards, and ransoms of up to several thousand dollars are also common. To gain access, the victim must give in to the payment demands of the attacker. The ransomware makes the servers and data inaccessible through encryption. By doing so, the victim unknowingly “activated” the ransomware that spread and infected the company’s site, computers, or the entire network. An example of a ransomware attack is where the victim clicks a link or pop-up ad or opens a corrupted file sent through email, or visits a website. Ransomware infections have grown to be the most common cyber extortion attack and will continue to grow as technology evolves. See how our investigators uncovered a massive organized crime racket that targeted wealthy European entrepreneurs with online smear campaign threats if they did not submit to the criminal’s extortion demands. While authorities are finally trying to catch up, cyber extortion has already grown into a multi-million-dollar cybercriminal industry. Some cyber-criminals left the art of stealing credit cards and personally identifiable information (PII) for a more straightforward scam where they threaten victims and demand money instead of stealing it. Most of our clients, businesses, and individuals are extorted by people within their own industry or who they know personally.

In our cybercrime investigations, we specialize in cyber extortion cases on a more personal level. This can severely damage a business or ruin someone’s life. Cyber extortion permeates actions such as ransomware, email ransom campaigns, and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Cyber extortion is an online crime where hackers hold your website, data, computer systems, or other sensitive information, hostage until you meet their demand for money.