Crypto Extortion on the Rise, Says Academic Study

Crypto-based extortion –  basically the process of using spam-flinging botnet armies to “ransom” dirty pictures and compromising information in exchange for bitcoin  –  has turned virtual crime into child’s play.Speaking this week at the Advances in Financial Technology conference in Zurich, an international team comprised of researchers from the Austrian Technology Institute and security provider GoSecure and found that the extortion process was quick, easy, and very lucrative.Using public data hack info, the researchers found that a single instance of the popular buy ethereum botnet launched over 80 campaigns and in the 4.3 million emails surveyed by the team. In almost all cases the criminals had no incriminating information on the victims. Read more