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Bitcoin ransom in a surprising new form

16 October 2017 21:00, UTC
Everybody knows about cryptocurrency ransomware – computers get infected, the content on them gets blocked, and the users are forced to pay ransom in digital currency after seeing a message from hackers.
 
But in this story, racketeering is conducted differently: the malefactors (although they might think they are on the good side) search through the Darkweb for drug buyers and then send a letter with threats to them, among those threats is deanonymization and reporting to the authorities about drug deals the users made. And letters they send are not e-mails, they make it on paper. The user of the popular Reddit website has posted photos of such a letter he received.



However, these menacing racketeers might be just children trying to get free money, as the letter posted on Reddit is overloaded with simple grammatical errors (“darkwe” instead of “darkweb”, come on). As the Reddit user notes, the Bitcoin sum demanded in the letter is surprisingly small, which is another reason to believe this letter was made by amateurs. After checking the wallet address mentioned in the letter on the blockchain tracking sites, one can find that just a few people decided to obey the racketeers – only 60 dollars were transferred, which is nothing in the current Bitcoin world.