Tag: scam
Online investment scams on the rise
Online investment fraudsters are becoming more devious and organized, making their increasingly sophisticated scams tough to detect for ordinary investors. A bust carried out by Europol and local European law enforcement on the perpetrators of the €645 million JuicyFields marijuana investment scam on April 11 is a prime example. Europol estimates that 550,000 investors worldwide, most from Europe, were drawn into the scam. Using bank transfers or cryptocurrencies, around 186,000 participants transferred funds to JuicyFields from early 2020 to July 2022. The JuicyFields fraudsters used advertisements on social networks to lure victims to their websites. These offered crowdsourcing investment opportunities in the cultivation, harvesting, and distribution of marijuana plants to be used for medicinal purposes. For a minimum initial investment of €50 in a so-called ‘e-growing’ opportunity, investors were promised to be linked with producers of medical cannabis.
US Government Sanctions 7 Chinese Hackers – March 26th
The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced sanctions against seven Chinese nationals based in Wuhan, China, for their affiliation with the 'APT31' hacking group. According to OFAC, APT31 is a nation-state-backed Chinese hacking group focused on infiltrating critical infrastructure in Eastern Europe, France, and the US.
Asia’s power grid target by threat actors – September 13th
A malicious malware attack targeting Asia's power grid has been reported. Called ShadowPad or PoisonPlug the malware allows for credential theft. Reports allege the malware to be the work of novel threat operation RedFly.
Sextortion scams soar by 178%
Security researchers, ESTET reports a 178% increase in sextortion emails between the first half of 2022 and the first six months of 2023, marking the category out as a top email threat. The company ranks sextortion emails third among all email threats in H1 2023.