"Fewer Than 100 Scammers Responsible For Global Email Extortion"

According to security researchers at Barracuda Networks, global email-based extortion scams are the work of just a small group of fraudsters.  The researchers teamed up with Columbia University to analyze over 300,000 extortion emails tracked by the firm over a one-year period.  They looked specifically at the Bitcoin addresses used by the scammers in order to discern specific trends.  The researchers found that the attacks are concentrated within a small number of Bitcoin addresses.  There are, in total, around 3000 unique Bitcoin addresses in their dataset, of which the top 10 addresses appear in about 30% of emails, and the top 100 addresses appear in about 80% of emails.  The researchers concluded that "even though extortion is a significant email threat with millions of malicious emails sent to victims every year, it is caused by a relatively small group of perpetrators (fewer than 100 attackers, and probably an even smaller number than that, assuming attackers use multiple Bitcoin addresses)."  The researchers noted that they suspect these small groups of attackers use similar best practices and templates.  The researchers noted that to stay under the radar, the fraudsters typically demand an amount between $400 and $5000, with 90% asking for less than $2000.  This "sweet spot" is thought to be chosen because it's more likely victims will pay without investigating whether the scammer actually has compromising information on them.

Infosecurity reports: "Fewer Than 100 Scammers Responsible For Global Email Extortion"