27 Jul 2024 - AJ
If someone asked me what scam I see most often, whether reported by our staff or on various sites, it has to be what I’d dub the Pegasus Extortion Scam, and as it’s always done via email, could be considered a form of phishing.
I call it that because the most recent variants mention the Pegasus spyware that comes up every so often. This has not always been so as the first versions I saw just mentioned a non-specific virus, but hey, scammers take advantage of anything in the news.
If you ever run across this scam, be aware that while I have zero good to say about NSO group and their clients (all rich scumbags and unethical government agencies - NSO Group does not care if they can make the munnies), their most well-known product Pegasus exploits mobile devices only, not desktops. Any email saying that they used Pegasus to take control of a non-mobile device can be safely ignored.
This will be the first scam I cover (and in more detail than I’m doing here), but safe to say that if you receive an email from your own email address that states you’ve been hacked, been recorded watching porn, and they want you to send cryptocurrency… no, you haven’t been hacked, you haven’t been recorded watching porn, and there is nothing that they can send to your family and friends, so relax!