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Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin

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Re: Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin

#41

Post by schrodinger »

larrys wrote: post #33
pavel_lishin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's if the extortionists even bother carrying through with their threat. It's pretty cheap to print up a thousand letters and mail them to pizzerias all over the country; if even a couple cough up the money, that's probably money and effort spent well enough. The deadline is far enough in the future that it's not really worth it to prove that punitive measures will be taken.

I guess I assumed these were coming from out of the country. Do we know that they are being mailed in the US? If that is the case the postal service almost certainly knows which post office these were mailed out of.

How useful is that? Someone could drive an hour, dump them all in a mailbox anonymously...

Re: Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin

#42

Post by VLM »

Nakatomi_Plaza wrote: post #14
VLM wrote: post #10

Obviously the victim isn't the local pizzera its Coinbase. Someone just spent "not very much money" to make them look incredibly bad. Should be fairly easy to track them down, just analyze the pattern of yellow dots on the color laser print to figure out the make, model, and serial number of the printer making the extortion letters, then contact whichever of coinbase's competitors made those letters and ... Now if I…

It's likely coinbase was chosen simply because it's the easiest way for their victims to buy coins. There is a vulnerability with Pizza businesses in that they trust the caller is making a legit order, and don't ask for pre-payment before delivery thus leaving them open to fraud. Whoever is doing this is clearly bluffing and hoping just a handful of businesses pay the extortion and likely flooded the mail system with…

Yeah you guys are probably right, after all.

If it demanded cash and suggested visiting your local Citibank Branch or Citibank In Network ATM that clearly would also be an equally random and meaningless data point, totally not trying to make Citibank look bad or anything.

Re: Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin

#43

Post by Scoundreller »

coreymgilmore wrote: post #13

Some quick digging around: not much to be found on the wallet addresses on the extortion letters. One wallet was tied to a 0.001 transaction on 6/27. wallet: 17gt1BancvtnnJwy4BA41VBUH3pfbUvzE block: 308079

Even if money goes in, you can't be assured someone didn't just deposit it for the lolz, or if it was the perpetrators just moving their own coin around.

Re: Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin

#44

Post by Scoundreller »

logicallee wrote: post #7
ngoel36 wrote: post #5

My girlfriend's father had a hacker break into their network drive, encrypt all their files, and extort the company for $500 of Bitcoin in exchange for the password...

That's some cheap-ass pentesting. Here you go buddy! (j/k) To explain the joke... companies spend tens of thousands doing "pentesting" to stave off vectors for concerted attacks. In this case, they would be spending tens of thousands to prevent the...$500 being extorted. My joke is that it is just as easy to pay the guy $500 for finding the errors. It's just a joke, though. You shouldn't pay extortionists a dime. (Ev…

There is some logic of burying wallet.dat files in various places in your systems and monitoring them. If/when they go missing, you know you have a problem.

Possibly set-up a periodic cycling system that drives the intruder to move them now, before they get cycled and might lose their bounty forever.

Re: Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin

#45

Post by larrys »

schrodinger wrote: post #41
larrys wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I assumed these were coming from out of the country. Do we know that they are being mailed in the US? If that is the case the postal service almost certainly knows which post office these were mailed out of.

How useful is that? Someone could drive an hour, dump them all in a mailbox anonymously...

Could be useful if triangulated with other information.

And it's always possible that whatever mailbox they dumped them in was in view of a video camera or perhaps their car passed video surveillance (or walked by). Or maybe used an ATM nearby. Or paid a toll. People slip up. For that matter what about all that stuff about embedding things in printers (micro traces or whatever they are called).

Otoh, I constantly get all sorts of scams from overseas wanting to charge me ridiculous amounts of money for trademark registries (approx. $2000 USD iirc) of zero value. They have been pretty consistent over the years and I'm guessing that even with the cost of foreign postage they are a net win for the perps. Otherwise I can't imagine they would keep sending them.

Re: Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin

#46

Post by Scoundreller »

ceejayoz wrote: post #8
ngoel36 wrote: post #5

My girlfriend's father had a hacker break into their network drive, encrypt all their files, and extort the company for $500 of Bitcoin in exchange for the password...

Your girlfriend's father opened an email attachment he shouldn't have, you mean? edit: C'mon, folks. Cryptolocker isn't a bunch of hackers targeting individual network drives. It's spread via email. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CryptoLocker

Email attachments today, browser 0-days tomorrow.

Re: Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin

#47

Post by [deleted] »

larrys wrote: post #33
pavel_lishin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's if the extortionists even bother carrying through with their threat. It's pretty cheap to print up a thousand letters and mail them to pizzerias all over the country; if even a couple cough up the money, that's probably money and effort spent well enough. The deadline is far enough in the future that it's not really worth it to prove that punitive measures will be taken.

I guess I assumed these were coming from out of the country. Do we know that they are being mailed in the US? If that is the case the postal service almost certainly knows which post office these were mailed out of.

[deleted]

Re: Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin

#49

Post by Scoundreller »

sharemywin wrote: post #38

Apparently they've never worked in pizza. I could just see them sending it to my dad. First off, What's a bitcoin? Negative Online review...what's an Online review. Harrassing telephone calls...you mean a friday night? Farudulant delivery orders...10 all the way pizzas with anchovies...sure we'll make those right up and deliver them...ya right... Illegal drug sales...don't be primising illegal drugs to the delivery d…

Would you mind doing us all a favour and building a database of every pizza place like this on the planet? It sounds like my (our?) kind of place.

Re: Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin

#50

Post by cjg »

fleitz wrote: post #22
VLM wrote: post #10

Obviously the victim isn't the local pizzera its Coinbase. Someone just spent "not very much money" to make them look incredibly bad. Should be fairly easy to track them down, just analyze the pattern of yellow dots on the color laser print to figure out the make, model, and serial number of the printer making the extortion letters, then contact whichever of coinbase's competitors made those letters and ... Now if I…

Will be super easy as long as they had the foresight to buy the printer on a credit card and the pizzeria's police force is actually CSI. Seriously, the police are not going to analyze dots on laser printer to track down an extortion for $500, just like they don't swab for prints / DNA on a B&E. Real life is not CSI.

I had an attempted break-in and the police (UK) did indeed dust for fingerprints - and they caught the guy.
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