In Colombia, the police authorities are warning its people about the scam wherein the attacker is asking for the ransom in cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC). This ransom is demanded in exchange for not disclosing the private details of the person who had kidnapped the victims. In this scam, the victim got an email from his account for the ransom.
Colonel Iván Santamaría, the operational commander of Citizen Security for the locality of the Aburrá Valley, complained about this crime. He said that this cyber-attack is done by spoofing method to steal the personal details of the victim. The attacker is unaware of the details of the Victim’s email account, but it is also sending emails to his account. The victim is getting threatening messages from his account.
In that email, the victim is told to pay the ransom amount in Bitcoin, which is equal to EUR 500. The attacker also sent the address to transfer Bitcoin funds in 30 hours. The attacker messaged that when he received the coins, then all the information with him would be removed.
According to the police, in 2019, the cybercrimes in Valle de Aburrá has been declined by 50% as compared to the last year. But, according to the recent study on the trends of cybercrime in Colombia 2019-2020 by the Colombian Chamber of Informatics and Telecommunications (CCIT) and the Center of Capacity building for the Cybersecurity of Colombia (C4) of the National Colombia Police, some of the cybercrimes are still there in the South American countries.in 2019, more than 28,000 cybercrimes in the business sector are reported, and on the other hand, it was more than 52,000 incidents. There were almost 8,000 cybercrimes which were based on identity thefts. Therefore, if you want to know more about this then, you have to go through live Bitcoin news to gain every information.
In the spoofing case, even if the victim paid the ransom, then also it gets the message from the attacker that this is amount does not correspond to the one that was asked to be paid. A new mail appears with a new address, amount, and time within the ransom has to be paid. This is how different scams happen in the country, which asked money in Bitcoin which is a huge amount in the local currency itself. People of Colombia are getting aware of these crimes through social websites, news columns and other awareness campaigns. Colombia is on high alert of such scams happening in the country.