New Sextortion Scam Uses Alternative Cryptocurrencies to Evade Detection

A new sextortion scam variant is using a wallet for a cryptocurrency other than bitcoin in an attempt to evade detection.

On October 8, Cofense revealed it had detected a modified sextortion scam that was using a wallet address for Litecoin instead of bitcoin.

The variant thereby differentiated itself from earlier sextortion campaigns detected by the anti-phishing solutions provider. Even as they moved from text to images and then to PDFs in order to fly under the radar of secure email gateways (SEGs), attackers still included the plaintext string of a bitcoin wallet address where recipients of a sextortion email could make a payment. SEGs eventually caught onto this tactic, however, which forced digital criminals to make a change.

Cofense explains in its research that this fraudsters opened up some opportunities for themselves by moving away from bitcoin:

…[T]hreat actors can switch to the next crypto currency and attempt to iterate through all the scam’s previous versions. While…