Fraudsters began to blackmail users with the disclosure of their data obtained through Telegram Botts

Fraudsters began to collect information for blackmailing Internet users from Telegram-boots that allow you to get various information about people, aggregating data from the databases that are flowing into the network.

As the head of the Surchinform company’s information security department, Alexei Drozd, told Kommersant , the Leakcheck Bot of the MailSearch of the Leakcheck, which was created to check passwords for leakage, was one of the data sources for criminals. This paid service allows users to find their username and passwords that are in open access by phone number. In the free version of the bot, part of the password is hidden, but fraudsters still use this data for blackmail by e -mail, demanding money, for non -surveillance of these data to friends, relatives or colleagues of victims.

“Most often, scammers write to the victims that their computer got a virus and all actions on the network are recorded, and they attach the last used password to confirm,” said Leakcheck, clarifying that it is impossible to find attackers, because MailSearchbot does not keep the history of requests. The company also noted that the restriction on the number of requests via MailSearchbot will not help in the fight against attackers, as it can be circumvented by creating new accounts.

According to Igor Bederov, the founder of the Internet search company, scammers can also impersonate a security service of a particular service. Criminals offer the victim to change the compromised password and get full access to the account. According to the expert, this year scammers will even more actively blackmail users. The law adopted at the end of last year will help them on the regulation of publicly available personal data. This law prohibits companies to collect information about people from social networks without their direct consent, even if we are talking about open profiles. Bederov believes that the adoption of the law can provoke a wave of extortion messages to the business on behalf of allegedly subjects of personal data.

Recall that in Telegram there are many bots that provide information about citizens. So, at the end of January, the cybersecurity researcher Alon Galo found in the Bot messenger, with which you can buy phone numbers of the Facebook social network. The hacker behind the bot claimed that the base that came to it contains data from 533 million Facebook users. It was obtained thanks to the vulnerability of the social network, which was eliminated in 2019. However, data from the base for the masses are still relevant, since people do not change the phone number so often.