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Patreon Users Threatened By Ashley Madison Scammers (csoonline.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the give-us-your-money dept.

itwbennett writes: "Over the last few days, the group responsible for extortion attempts and death threats against Ashley Madison users has turned to a new set of targets – Patreon users," writes CSO's Steve Ragan. A message sent from the same account used in previous campaigns by the scammers demands a payment of 1 BTC or else the Patreon user will have their personal information exposed. "The [Bitcoin] wallet being used by the group has barely collected anything," says Ragan, "suggesting that after their massive push towards Ashley Madison users, people have stopped falling for their scams."

11 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Nothing to hide by supremebob · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The "problem" that they're having with threatening to dox Patreon users is that most of them don't have a dirty secret that they're trying to hide like the Ashley Madison folks.

    Hey... if you want to "out" people for donating to good causes, go ahead! They'll probably get more sympathy than anything else. Odds are that you're just going to piss off a rival hacking group like Anonymous who's going to return the favor against the scammers.

    1. Re:Nothing to hide by sheetsda · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They're threatening to release SSN and related information that is being used as verification for credit applications, etc. The companies negligently using SSN as a verification mechanism is where we (the public) need to start suing in order to clean up this mess.

    2. Re:Nothing to hide by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Technically, they do... The September Patreon leak had ENCRYPTED tax form data, but the keys to access it were never in that data leak, and even if they had 10 million bots in a botnet to try and crack the RSA key for the tax form informaiton, that's a largely disproportionate amount of CPU time dedicated to trying to decrypt information that is effectively worthless to criminals outside of the US.

      As for leaking any damaging information .... the Patreon data leak was back in September, it wouldn't matter if they leaked anything they have or not, the people who would be "worst damaged" from the leak would be the people who are paying artists to draw them porn. Oh boo hoo. Finding anything that someone would want to pay for to keep buried on Patreon is pretty hard, considering that people that don't speak or read English wouldn't know what kind of information would be considered embarrassing. Nobody is going to kill themselves over Patreon, nobody. Most of the "porn" on Patreon is of the furry variety, and at worst, furries aren't embarrassed to be furries.

  2. Oh noes! by DRJlaw · · Score: 2

    A message sent from the same account used in previous campaigns by the scammers demands a payment of 1 BTC or else the Patreon user will have their personal information exposed.

    Ashley Madison users had something that they might want to hide - the fact that they had signed up for the site which when combined with an assumption that they'd used it to cheat would be socially costly.

    But oh noes! Someone might find out that you crowdfunded an artist to create culture! Boy... really going to be ashamed of that one, aren't you?

    Not a member of either, but can't possibly think of why I'd pay in this new instance.

  3. The claim to have info they can't have by geekd · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm a Patreon user, and I got the scam email.

    They claimed "I have your tax id, tax forms, SSN, DOB, Name, Address, Credit card details and more sensitive data..."

    All Patreon has of mine is my credit card info, name, and billing address. The same stuff any online retailer, or anyone who takes payment has. They DO NOT have my tax id, etc.

    So it's obviously a scam right from the beginning.

  4. Good email services by KitFox · · Score: 2

    Perhaps the biggest problem they encountered is the fact that the email service providers are sending their threats to the spam box where nobody is likely to see them. Hard to have good return on your marketing when you don't have trusted email.

    What amuses me most is that they'd probably make more money if they set up their own Patreon account.

    --

    @Whee

  5. Whut? by godel_56 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It would have been nice if the fucking summary had told us who or what Patreon was.

  6. I don't know where they're getting their lists.. by jcr · · Score: 2

    I got a threat from these clowns. I take it about as seriously as those douchebags who say they want my help to claim their 8 million dollar inheritance from their deceased parents in Nigeria.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  7. Re:Wait, what? You can see other peoples' wallets? by Qzukk · · Score: 4, Informative

    https://blockchain.info/

    A bitcoin isn't a "thing". It's an entry in a public ledger that says "wallet X paid wallet Y 0.001BTC". All* the wallets start out at 0 and if you want to see how much money wallet Y has now, you start at the beginning and add all the payments into it and subtract all the payments out of it. Example:

    https://blockchain.info/addres...

    has 0 BTC balance after receiving 3 payments and making 3 payments (the tiny fraction of a BTC missing each transaction is the fee paid to miners to process it).

    As for anonymity, I normally have no way of telling you who 1ENYmn1eCWPa4MFD4VU9wUFqLrzPcqUgaY is. But if one of those payments there was made from an ATM that converts money to BTC (and takes a photo) or one of those debits was sent to a drug dealer who mailed the drugs to the wallet owner's home address, then got busted by the cops who got a customer list, then it could be figured out.

    --
    If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
  8. Re:or... by jopsen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    One of these days, they are going to find themselves accidently threatening a russian mafia boss, hells angel commander, mexican cartel boss or something to that effect, and they will find themselves very very dead.

    Get real this isn't a movie...

  9. Re:Wait, what? You can see other peoples' wallets? by mlts · · Score: 2

    Very true. Blockchains definitely are truly proof of where the coins went. However, there are ways to launder BTC, such as tumblers, CoinJoin, exchanging for another currency and then back, and so on.

    Because of this, BitCoin is still used for nefarious purposes, as the transactions may be 100% traceable, but once moved out of the BTC arena into another currency, that is where the trail can go cold quickly.