The emails are from the address they\u2019re sent to, and the emails all seem to have mostly the same form: \u201cHi, your account is infected!\u201d the email reads. \u201cYou probably do not know anything about me and you are most likely wondering why you\u2019re receiving this electronic message, proper?\u201d Clearly we\u2019re dealing with a native English speaker. \u201cI\u2019mhacker who openedyour emailand OStwo months ago [sic].\u201d I find that highly unlikely. \u201cDo not attempt to msg me or find me, it\u2019s not possible, considering that I directed you an email from YOUR hacked account.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps you\u2019ve seen an email like this? The email goes on to say that they\u2019ve keylogged everything you type, accessed your screen, and your webcam (this line is really funny to us since none of us have webcams on our computers). The email threatens to expose your secrets and online activity (specifically naming the adult variety) to your contact list unless you pay them an exorbitant amount of money via bitcoin and giving you 48 hours to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you might suspect, this email is indeed preposterous, both technically, as well as realistically. But then how did they send the email from your account? In truth, they didn\u2019t. Sending an email from any address real or contrived is trivially simple. One need only use an email server that doesn\u2019t require authentication to send messages and send them with a fake return address. As for the contents they\u2019re entirely contrived. They\u2019re worded in such a way (likely including spelling mistakes) to make the recipient believe that the sender is some elite hacker. One can see that the email doesn\u2019t come from where it purports to when checking what are called the headers. This is basically like a postmark that servers which send or relay the message put on the message to indicate its path to your inbox. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fake Bills<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Blackmail isn\u2019t the only scam we\u2019ve seen. Some of our customers have received Domain Renewal bills from a company called iDNS. iDNS, while legitimate in the sense of being able to renew and register domain names, does not send legitimate notices of this kind. A picture of the letter they send can be seen here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of Sharp Innovations’ clients have their domain name registered through iDNS and for good reason: they charge 4-6 times greater than the market rate for Domain Name services. Also they employ shady tactics like those found in this letter formatted intentionally to look like a bill or invoice. Also notice that they cannot seem to get the domain name \u201cidns.com\u201d but instead have to use \u201cidns.ac\u201d. They intentionally send these letters more than three months before the expiration (which is when most registrars will send reminder emails that the domain is coming up for renewal). <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"scam](\"https:\/\/www.sharpinnovations.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/idns-2.jpg\")
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