Bitcoin Blackmail Email Ashley Madison Chain-Letter

Heh, I'm not having an affair, and if these idiots spammer want to send a screencap of my Facebook page to my wife, they can go right ahead.

I got two of these bitcoin blackmail emails in my spam folder this morning, and they're actually kinda funny.

At Gizmodo, "Extortionists Are After the Ashley Madison Users and They Want Bitcoin":

This is an unnerving but not unpredictable turn of events. The data that the Ashley Madison hackers released early this week included millions of real email addresses, along with real home addresses, sexual proclivities and other very private information. Security blogger Brian Krebs talked to security firms who have evidence of extortion schemes linked to Ashley Madison data. Turns out spam filters are catching a number of emails being sent to victims from people who say they’ll make the information public unless they get paid!

Here’s one caught by an email provider in Milwaukee:

Hello,

Unfortunately, your data was leaked in the recent hacking of Ashley Madison and I now have your information.

If you would like to prevent me from finding and sharing this information with your significant other send exactly 1.0000001 Bitcoins (approx. value $225 USD) to the following address:

1B8eH7HR87vbVbMzX4gk9nYyus3KnXs4Ez

Sending the wrong amount means I won’t know it’s you who paid.

You have 7 days from receipt of this email to send the BTC [bitcoins]. If you need help locating a place to purchase BTC, you can start here….

The above email was forwarded to Brian Krebs who points out that no bitcoins have been added that wallet yet. (Looks like the Milwaukee-based victim did not pay up.)

One security expert explained to Krebs that this type of extortion could be dangerous. “There is going to be a dramatic crime wave of these types of virtual shakedowns, and they’ll evolve into spear-phishing campaigns that leverage crypto malware,” said Tom Kellerman of Trend Micro...

Lolz. I'm not on Ashley Madison, but any extortionist can get my email off my Blogger profile. In fact, my spammers altered the chain email like this:

I have all of your information about your affair, including the pics. I have your Facebook page as well, using this I can now message all of your friends and family members.

If you would like to prevent me from sharing this dirt info with all of your friends and family members (and perhaps even your employers too?) then you need to send 1 bitcoin to the following BTC address...

Right.

Fucking losers.