A new report by Check Point warns that the Phorpiex botnet (aka Trik), which has been active for close to a decade, is now being used to distribute sextortion emails claiming that the sender has obtained embarrassing information about the recipient, such as a video recorded by their webcam while they were browsing adult websites. The victim is told to pay the sender a certain sum in a given cryptocurrency in order to prevent them from making the embarrassing information public.
The Phorpiex worm is distributed via email. Once it infects a device, it can perform various malicious actions. The newest functionality is downloading email databases and using them to send out up to 30,000 sextortion emails per hour. The researchers found that since April of this year, sextortion victims have paid the threat actors behind Phorpiex at least 11.99545 bitcoins (around $97,000 at the current price).
Read more: Malware Uses Your PC to Send 30K Sextortion Emails Per Hour
