How to protect yourself from bitcoin demand letters

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In 2023, there are a lot of spam emails. With their help, attackers spread malware or extort money in various ways. The latter is also happening in the world of cryptocurrencies. Sometimes users receive emails with demands to pay bitcoins to scammers. Once in a while, recipients of such mailings even agree to the attackers’ terms.

Variants of bitcoin extortion spam emails

There are 2 popular blackmail scenarios for 2023:

The attacker has encrypted the data on your computer. In such cases, extortionists demand to pay them for decrypting important information. At the same time, for failure to fulfill the conditions, they can threaten to leak the data to the Internet and so on.
A scammer has videotaped a user watching “adult” videos. In such cases, blackmailers usually ask for a fee to maintain confidentiality. If the demands are not met, they may also threaten to publish the video on the Internet.

Bitcoin extortion emails are accompanied by abstract stories. Scammers often tell how they hacked into a computer, that they gained full access to it, found or recorded compromise, and so on. At the end of the letters, blackmailers usually say that it is not difficult for them to leak photos, videos, correspondence and other things. As a result, for “keeping silent” they demand to transfer bitcoins to the attached cryptocurrency address and set time limits, for example 72 hours. In doing so, the attackers psychologically pressure the recipients of the mailings.

How to protect yourself from bitcoin demand letters — A forum user shared blackmail via a spam email and demand for BTC

Reasons for receiving

The most popular factor is a leaked email address. Spammers don’t select victims and don’t search for e-mail manually. They buy or take free ready-made databases (DB) with thousands of addresses of different people. You can find them:

On special free websites.
On the darknet.
Through dishonest people who have access to the database at work.
On forums.

The address can be leaked in various ways. It depends on the user’s activity on the Internet and his cyber literacy. Here are 6 easy ways to leak information:

Social media.
Messengers.
Unverified internet networks – Wi-Fi in public places and other connections.
Surveys from unfamiliar faces.
Search engines – Yandex, Google and others.
Unverified sites. Some services are intentionally created by fraudsters to steal data.

In 2023, all of them collect information about users. Attackers, however, can obtain information on these services. Then fraudsters sell to spammers or publish the database with email addresses for free.

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To preserve your privacy, you should watch your actions. It is not recommended to publish personal information, use unverified services, take surveys created by strangers, and so on.

What to do when you receive an email

Cybersecurity experts give different recommendations. The 3 main tips are:

Stay calm. Scammers usually just provoke victims. Only in rare cases do blackmailers actually have compromises.
Change passwords from accounts. The advice is relevant if attackers send emails demanding bitcoins and start them with phrases of the following nature: “******** is your password”.
Check your computer for viruses. Sometimes hackers get e-mail victims with the help of malicious programs. In such cases, checking and removing viruses often avoids increasing the amount of spam in the future.

In this case, you should not do the following:

Respond to spam. This will show that the address is valid. Then spam mailings will start coming more often.
Pay blackmailers. Bitcoins will be wasted.
Follow the links and download files from the “Spam” folder. Scammers often put viruses in them. Therefore, clicking on links or downloading files from such folders usually leads to infecting your computer.

How to find viruses on your device

To prevent such situations, it is worth using an antivirus. In 2023, Kaspersky and Avast are popular. Their developers regularly update their databases. Therefore, Kaspersky and Avast often find even new viruses.

You can also use antiviruses built into operating systems (OS). For example, Windows has integrated Windows Defender software.

It is also recommended to analyze current processes. In Windows, you can do this through the service “Task Manager”. The software is opened by pressing the Ctrl, Shift and Esc keys simultaneously.

Viruses are often disguised as system processes with a difference in names of 1-2 characters. Examples are given in the table below.

System task	Malicious file
csrss.exe	csrcs.exe
svchost.exe	scvvhost.exe

More virus names can be meaningless character sets:

ssshack.exe.
ta496gr.exe.

All these processes should be terminated. But it is better to remove them through the registry.

How to secure your device

There are so many recommendations for 2023. Here are the main tips:

Update the OS in a timely manner.
Clean the system regularly.
Keep browsers and installed programs up to date.
Do not save login information on your computer.
Do not use public Wi-Fi networks.
Install an antivirus. It is better to use paid versions of programs, as they have advanced functionality.