A security report indicates that a new malware is being launched against victims worldwide, this time this is the Phorpiex botnet. The criminals use a sextortion social engineering scam that manipulates the recipients into thinking that they need to pay the criminals a certain sum.
Worldwide Sextortion Scan Launched By Phorpiex Botnet
A group of security researchers has reported that a new dangerous botnet called Phorpiex has been launched against victims worldwide. According to the available data it has been active since April this year. Ever since its release more than 37 million emails were sent in one of the campaign instance.
The dangerous consequence is the fact that more than 14 BTC has been sent to the hacker-controlled wallet address according to the public ledger monitoring. Instead of infecting the intended victims via the most popular methods it probably uses an alternative approach. It is possible that the threat is delivered to the users via a self-propagation technique. This can be either the placing of the necessary code into files that are automatically launched on removable media (CD/DVD disks and removable USB storage) or by uploading them to social media networks or over messaging apps. This includes popular options like Skype, Facebook Messenger and etc. From the analysis of the botnet’s operations the security analysts that it is likely based on earlier threats that have been modified to create this new malware version.
The end goals of the Phorpiex botnet appears to be to push both social engineering blackmail messages and also various malware payloads. Some of the most popular examples are Trojans and ransomware. What’s particularly dangerous about botnets in particular is the fact that at any time the criminals can change the behavior patterns.
Martin Beltov
Martin graduated with a degree in Publishing from Sofia University. As a cyber security enthusiast he enjoys writing about the latest threats and mechanisms of intrusion.
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