FBI says cybercriminals are hacking into victims’ online accounts to steal their intimate pictures

In Brief

The FBI is warning that cybercriminals are hacking into the societal media accounts of adults and children to bargain their intimate explicit images and videos.

The perpetrators trust mostly connected societal engineering tactics to people people, the alert said, and victims are often extorted, oregon their stolen contented published online.

“Victims often look re-victimization done harassment, sextortion, stalking oregon different targeted attacks, specified arsenic advertizing stolen contented connected a victim’s ain societal media page,” the FBI wrote.

These types of crimes person been known for years. But the FBI’s nationalist alert could bespeak that these incidents are present connected the rise, according to Rachel Tobac, the CEO of the information consciousness grooming steadfast SocialProof Security. The FBI did not respond to TechCrunch’s petition for comment.

Tobac said that these attacks particularly people young boys, and that these attacks are “a large nationalist wellness issue,” fixed that sometimes the victims are driven to self-harm successful response.

The FBI’s advisory said the attackers trust connected brute-forcing accounts utilizing leaked oregon antecedently utilized passwords, impersonating lawsuit work representatives by pretending to enactment for Instagram and different societal media companies, and contacting targets alleging that they request to retrieve their account. Some hackers usage phishing emails that trust connected fake domains that look similar morganatic societal media log-in pages.

To support yourself, usage unsocial passwords stored successful a password manager, guarantee multi-factor authentication is switched on, and beryllium suspicious of anyone reaching retired unprompted claiming to enactment for a societal media company, arsenic tech companies mostly bash not scope retired to their customers. The advisory besides urges radical to debar storing delicate and intimate pictures successful online accounts.

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