Police authorities in Colombia warn about a type of scam in which the attackers asking for a ransom in bitcoin (BTC) in exchange of not revealing personal information allegedly kidnapped their victims. So raved the colombian Telemedellín this 26 of November.The most striking aspect of the scam is that the victim receives an email from your own email account. The complaint is made by the operational commander of Citizen Security for the locality of the Valley of Aburrá, colonel Iván Santamaría, cited by the aforementioned means.According to Santamaria, this is a practice known as spoofing. A form of identity theft in electronic communications. However, the attacker does not take ownership of the access to the email account of his victim, but that it has the ability to send messages from any account. The victim, while receiving mail threatening from his own account, considers that his data are actually committed.In the post referred to by the colombian official, the victim is asked to pay a ransom in bitcoin equivalent of EUR 500, according to the report published by the means before mentioned. In addition, in the email the attacker is attributed to the abduction of personal data of the affected party, that provides a address of Bitcoin for sending funds and a time limit of 30 hours to do it.“When I receive the coins, I guarantee absolutely that the data collected will be deleted. Don’t need them.” With that message, the attacker seeks to give security on the destination of the data allegedly kidnapped their victims.
Contents
Colombia and the computer crimes
The same report Telemedellín ensures that the incidence of computer crimes in the Valle de Aburrá has decreased by 50% in 2019 compared to the previous year, according to police sources in the town.But there are few computer-related crimes in the south american country, according to the study Trends of Cybercrime in Colombia 2019-2020, carried out by entities of the Colombian Chamber of Informatics and Telecommunications (CCIT) and the Center of Capacity building for the Cybersecurity of Colombia (C4) of the National Police of colombia.In that document, it is mentioned that during this year have occurred more than 28,000 computer crimes in the business area. The same study points out that from the year 2017, have been more than 52,000 incidents of this type. Of them, at least 8,000 correspond to identity theft crimes.
Spoofing with payments in bitcoin
A publication in Spanish Public already was aware of such practice, at the beginning of the month of November. Although it also mentions that text is not a new practice, and that it is not only asking for ransom payments in bitcoin.On that note, signed by journalist Luis Garcia, referred to the same spoofing with a message that could seem to be a continuation to that mentioned in the environment in colombia. In the email quoted in that note, mention of a payment already made by the victim. But in that email, the attacker claims that the amount does not correspond with the one that was supposed to be paid.In addition, in the new mail provides a address of Bitcoin is different and a new term of payment 24 hours. The address cited in this text has not received transactions, at the time of drafting of this note. So what we affirm through the browser of blocks of blockchain.com.Another history highlight was the scam to users of Uphold in November 2018. Purpose of the offers the Black Friday, users of the platform received an e-mail from the account of Uphold by offering a refund of 15% of the funds they had in their accounts.To do this, the only condition was to deposit at least 0,1 BTC to an address of Bitcoin is provided in the same email. Although Uphold reported via Twitter that it was a fraud after being committed to its e-mail service, the address pointed to by the scammers came to receive up to 0,53742844 BTC. At the time of the fraud, that figure amounted to about USD 2.400. Now, the same figure exceeds USD 3.600.