I Contaminated Your Machine With A Virus Email Scam

What is "I Contaminated Your Machine With A Virus"?

"I Contaminated Your Machine With A Virus" is another spam email campaign designed to extort recipients.

Cyber criminals send thousands of emails with deceptive messages stating that they have infected the victim's computer and recorded compromising material. These people threaten to send the recorded video to all of the victim's contacts unless a ransom is paid. This is a scam.

Emails from the "I Contaminated Your Machine With A Virus" spam campaign claim that cyber criminals have injected malware into the system when the recipient was supposedly watching an adult video. It is also stated all personal data has been stolen and a video recorded via the webcam of the victim masturbating.

These claims are followed by a threat stating that the video will be sent to all of the victim's contacts unless a ransom of $480 in Bitcoins is paid. The recipient has 25 hours to submit payment. If payment is made, all material will supposedly be deleted. This is simply a scam. Cyber criminals send these emails to hundreds of thousands of users hoping that some will fall for it.

Unfortunately, they often succeed in tricking unsuspecting users (especially those who lack knowledge in cyber security) and generating revenue. These spam campaigns are very simple, and yet beneficial for criminals. The number of these campaigns is large and growing daily.

If you receive email messages stating that someone has infected your computer, stolen data or similar, simply ignore them, since they are fraudulent.

Threat Summary:

Name	I Contaminated Your Machine With A Virus Email Scam
Threat Type	Phishing, Scam, Social Engineering, Fraud
Symptoms	Unauthorized online purchases, changed online account passwords, identity theft, illegal access of one's computer.
Distribution methods	Deceptive emails, rogue online pop-up ads, search engine poisoning techniques, misspelled domains.
Damage	Loss of sensitive private information, monetary loss, identity theft.
Malware Removal (Windows)	To eliminate possible malware infections, scan your computer with legitimate antivirus software. Our security researchers recommend using Combo Cleaner. ▼ Download Combo Cleaner To use full-featured product, you have to purchase a license for Combo Cleaner. 7 days free trial available. Combo Cleaner is owned and operated by Rcs Lt, the parent company of PCRisk.com read more.

"I Contaminated Your Machine With A Virus" shares many similarities with dozens of other spam campaigns, such as "You May Not Know Me", "I'll Begin With The Most Important", "I Hacked Your Device", "Services Which Actually I Sell In Darknet", etc. These spam campaigns are also used to extort money from recipients, however, other campaigns are used to proliferate viruses.

These are delivered with malicious attachments that, once opened, infiltrate malware into the system. In most cases, spam campaigns are used to proliferate trojan-type viruses, such as Adwind, FormBook, Hancitor, AZORult, TrickBot, and many others. Some campaigns also proliferate ransomware.

In any case, however, opening attached files/links is very risky, since the presence of such malware can lead to serious privacy issues, as well as financial and data losses.

How do spam campaigns infect computers?

As mentioned above, email campaigns proliferate viruses via malicious attachments, however, users' intervention is necessary for the malware to infiltrate (users must trigger the infection manually by opening malicious attachments). File types distributed using these spam campaigns include executables, JavaScript files, PDF documents, archives, and many others.

In most cases, however, attachments are Microsoft Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.). Once opened, these ask victims to enable macro commands. In doing so, many users inadvertently grant these files permission to download and install malware. In summary, users' lack of knowledge and careless behavior are the main reasons for such computer infections.

How to avoid installation of malware?

The key to computer safety is caution. Therefore, pay close attention when browsing the internet. Think twice before opening email attachments. If the file/link is received from a suspicious party or seems irrelevant, do not open anything.

Bear in mind that criminals often send deceptive messages to abuse recipients' curiosity (e.g., "you have received a package", "you have won a lottery", and so on). They attempt to trick users by offering something free of charge. Do not fall for these scams.

Have a reputable anti-virus/anti-spyware suite installed and running, since these tools can detect and eliminate malware before any damage is done. If you have already opened malicious attachments, we recommend running a scan with Combo Cleaner Antivirus for Windows to automatically eliminate infiltrated malware.

Text presented in the "I Contaminated Your Machine With A Virus" email message:

Subject: Your friends will love this vid of you beating your meat

Hello,

Expect you actually don't care about my english sentence structure, since im from Denmark. I contaminated your machine with a virus and now have all of your private data from your computer system.

It was set up on an adult page after which you have selected the online video and  it, my program immediately got into your os.

Then simply, your cam recorded you flying solo, on top of that i documented a video that you have looked at.

Immediately after some time additionally, it picked up all your device contact info. If you ever want me to wipe off your all that i have - transfer me 480 dollars in btc it's a crypto-currency. Its my account transfer address : 17rABUVhKzTxzwznAJMd8MHabzCZuwhUwu

Now you have 25 hrs. to make up your mind As soon as i will receive the transaction i am going to wipe out this movie and every little thing entirely. If not, you should be sure that the footage is going to be forwarded to all your contacts.

Instant automatic malware removal: Manual threat removal might be a lengthy and complicated process that requires advanced IT skills. Combo Cleaner is a professional automatic malware removal tool that is recommended to get rid of malware. Download it by clicking the button below:
▼ DOWNLOAD Combo Cleaner By downloading any software listed on this website you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. To use full-featured product, you have to purchase a license for Combo Cleaner. 7 days free trial available. Combo Cleaner is owned and operated by Rcs Lt, the parent company of PCRisk.com read more.

Quick menu:

• What is I Contaminated Your Machine With A Virus spam?
• Types of malicious emails.
• How to spot a malicious email?
• What to do if you fell for an email scam?

Types of malicious emails:

Phishing Emails

Most commonly, cybercriminals use deceptive emails to trick Internet users into giving away their sensitive private information, for example, login information for various online services, email accounts, or online banking information.

Such attacks are called phishing. In a phishing attack, cybercriminals usually send an email message with some popular service logo (for example, Microsoft, DHL, Amazon, Netflix), create urgency (wrong shipping address, expired password, etc.), and place a link which they hope their potential victims will click on.

After clicking the link presented in such email message, victims are redirected to a fake website that looks identical or extremely similar to the original one. Victims are then asked to enter their password, credit card details, or some other information that gets stolen by cybercriminals.

Emails with Malicious Attachments

Another popular attack vector is email spam with malicious attachments that infect users' computers with malware. Malicious attachments usually carry trojans that are capable of stealing passwords, banking information, and other sensitive information.

In such attacks, cybercriminals' main goal is to trick their potential victims into opening an infected email attachment. To achieve this goal, email messages usually talk about recently received invoices, faxes, or voice messages.

If a potential victim falls for the lure and opens the attachment, their computers get infected, and cybercriminals can collect a lot of sensitive information.

While it's a more complicated method to steal personal information (spam filters and antivirus programs usually detect such attempts), if successful, cybercriminals can get a much wider array of data and can collect information for a long period of time.

Sextortion Emails

This is a type of phishing. In this case, users receive an email claiming that a cybercriminal could access the webcam of the potential victim and has a video recording of one's masturbation.

To get rid of the video, victims are asked to pay a ransom (usually using Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency). Nevertheless, all of these claims are false - users who receive such emails should ignore and delete them.

How to spot a malicious email?

While cyber criminals try to make their lure emails look trustworthy, here are some things that you should look for when trying to spot a phishing email:

• Check the sender's ("from") email address: Hover your mouse over the "from" address and check if it's legitimate. For example, if you received an email from Microsoft, be sure to check if the email address is @microsoft.com and not something suspicious like @m1crosoft.com, @microsfot.com, @account-security-noreply.com, etc.
• Check for generic greetings: If the greeting in the email is "Dear user", "Dear @youremail.com", "Dear valued customer", this should raise suspiciousness. Most commonly, companies call you by your name. Lack of this information could signal a phishing attempt.
• Check the links in the email: Hover your mouse over the link presented in the email, if the link that appears seems suspicious, don't click it. For example, if you received an email from Microsoft and the link in the email shows that it will go to firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0... you shouldn't trust it. It's best not to click any links in the emails but to visit the company website that sent you the email in the first place.
• Don't blindly trust email attachments: Most commonly, legitimate companies will ask you to log in to their website and to view any documents there; if you received an email with an attachment, it's a good idea to scan it with an antivirus application. Infected email attachments are a common attack vector used by cybercriminals.

To minimise the risk of opening phishing and malicious emails we recommend using Combo Cleaner Antivirus for Windows. 

Example of a spam email:

What to do if you fell for an email scam?

• If you clicked on a link in a phishing email and entered your password - be sure to change your password as soon as possible. Usually, cybercriminals collect stolen credentials and then sell them to other groups that use them for malicious purposes. If you change your password in a timely manner, there's a chance that criminals won't have enough time to do any damage.
• If you entered your credit card information - contact your bank as soon as possible and explain the situation. There's a good chance that you will need to cancel your compromised credit card and get a new one.
• If you see any signs of identity theft - you should immediately contact the Federal Trade Commission. This institution will collect information about your situation and create a personal recovery plan.
• If you opened a malicious attachment - your computer is probably infected, you should scan it with a reputable antivirus application. For this purpose, we recommend using Combo Cleaner Antivirus for Windows.
• Help other Internet users - report phishing emails to Anti-Phishing Working Group, FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, National Fraud Information Center and U.S. Department of Justice.

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