Tag: blackmail

New ‘Sextortion’ Spyware Snaps Webcam Photos Of People Watching Porn

If you’re indulging in adult content online, you might want to slap some electrical tape over your webcam pronto, according to a new report from WIRED. Cybersecurity experts at Proofpoint, a battle-tested firm, just dropped a bombshell detailing a nasty new strain of “infostealer” malware called Stealerium. This open-source digital menace can hijack your webcam to snap photos, snoop on your browser for NSFW keywords, and capture screenshots of anything spicy – all of which could be weaponized for blackmail and extortion schemes that’ll leave victims reeling.

“When it comes to infostealers, they typically are looking for whatever they can grab,” Proofpoint researcher Selena Larson told WIRED, exposing the chilling reality of this cyberthreat. “This adds another layer of privacy invasion and sensitive information that you definitely wouldn’t want in the hands of a particular hacker.”“It’s gross,” Larson fumed. “I hate it.”

WIRED has more:

More hands-on sextortion methods are a common blackmail tactic among cybercriminals, and scam campaigns in which hackers claim to have obtained webcam pics of victims looking at pornography have also plagued inboxes in recent years—including some that even try to bolster their credibility with pictures of the victim’s home pulled from Google Maps. But actual, automated webcam pics of users browsing porn is “pretty much unheard of,” says Proofpoint researcher Kyle Cucci. The only similar known example, he says, was a malware campaign that targeted French speaking users in 2019, discovered by the Slovakian cybersecurity firm ESET.

Larson laid bare the sinister tactics of sextortion spyware, which preys on individuals for profit while flying under the radar. “For a hacker, it’s not like you’re taking down a multimillion-dollar company that is going to make waves and have a lot of follow-on impacts,” she said. “They’re trying to monetize people one at a time. And maybe people who might be ashamed about reporting something like this.”

The malware’s creator, known as witchfindertr, identifies as a “malware analyst” based in London. To top it all off, Stealerium is freely available as an open-source tool on GitHub.

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Thai Woman Arrested for Having Sex With Monks and Blackmailing Them, in Scandal Rocking Buddhist Clergy

Thailand’s society and its Buddhist clergy are reeling from a sex scandal in which a woman seduced monks and proceeded to extract money from them via blackmail.

Sky News reported:

“At least nine abbots and senior monks have been disrobed and cast out of the monkhood, the Royal Thai Police Central Investigation Bureau said.

Wilawan Emsawat, in her mid-30s, is accused of enticing senior monks into having sex with her and then pressuring them into making large payments to cover it up.”

Thai monks from the Theravada sect are celibate and can’t even touch a woman.

“Several monks transferred large amounts of money after Wilawan initiated romantic relationships with them, police said -her bank accounts received around 385 million baht (£8.8m) in the past three years, with most of that spent on gambling websites.”

Wilawan was arrested on charges of extortion, money laundering and receiving stolen goods.

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Former Israeli Intel Official Claims Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell Worked for Israel

Since the apparent death by suicide of Jeffrey Epstein in a Manhattan prison, much has come to light about his depraved activities and methods used to sexually abuse underage girls and entrap the rich and powerful for the purposes of blackmail. Epstein’s ties to intelligence, described in-depth in a recent MintPress investigative series, have continued to receive minimal mainstream media coverage, which has essentially moved on from the Epstein scandal despite the fact that his many co-conspirators remain on the loose.

For those who have examined Epstein’s ties to intelligence, there are clear links to both U.S. intelligence and Israeli intelligence, leaving it somewhat open to debate as to which country’s intelligence apparatus was closest to Epstein and most involved in his blackmail/sex-trafficking activities. A recent interview given by a former high-ranking official in Israeli military intelligence has claimed that Epstein’s sexual blackmail enterprise was an Israel intelligence operation run for the purpose of entrapping powerful individuals and politicians in the United States and abroad.

In an interview with Zev Shalev, former CBS News executive producer and award-winning investigative journalist for Narativ, the former senior executive for Israel’s Directorate of Military Intelligence, Ari Ben-Menashe, claimed not only to have met Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, back in the 1980s, but that both Epstein and Maxwell were already working with Israeli intelligence during that time period. 

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OMG: NY State Senior Health Department Lawyer Claims Governor Cuomo Was “Forced” Into Signing Nursing Home Law After Sexual Misconduct “Blackmail”

A New York State Health Department lawyer was caught on undercover video claiming former NY Governor Andrew Cuomo was “forced” into signing a nursing home reform bill after sexual misconduct allegations.

Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was found to have sexually harassed multiple women, AG Letitia James announced in August 2021 after a 4-month investigation into the accusations.

According to NY AG Letitia James, Cuomo violated state and federal law.

James said Cuomo harassed current and former state employees and created a hostile work environment.

Cuomo resigned in disgrace on August 10, 2021, amid several criminal investigations into his sexual misconduct.

New York State Health Department lawyer Jacob Wilkinson said Cuomo was “forced” into signing a nursing home law amid the sexual misconduct allegations.

“When Cuomo was getting that investigation, he didn’t have a lot of political power,” Jacob Wilkinson said to the OMG journalist. “His political power went down, right? And so, he was pushed to sign this group of legislation,”

“Some of the allegations are 100% fake,” Wilkinson said. “Those girls who were, like, in the allegations, were sitting on his lap taking selfies with him at events.”

When asked whether Cuomo had been blackmailed, Wilkinson responded, “He kind of was. He apparently didn’t give them what they wanted. That’s why they exposed him.”

Wilkinson told the OMG journalist that the Nurses Association wrote the nursing home reform bill.

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CIA Whistleblower Reveals How Intelligence Agencies Gather Blackmail on Politicians Without Them Suspecting It

The ex-CIA officer who blew the whistle on torture just shared a chilling story about how the intelligence community will go to any lengths to blackmail people in power for the secrets they want.

On Patrick Bet-David’s podcast, John Kiriakou revealed that his CIA operational trainer was rewarded with a promotion and a medal for recruiting a copy machine repairman.

At first, Kiriakou laughed, but then he realized the brilliance of the plan when he learned that the repairman secretly sent every document from a prime minister’s office straight to the CIA.

How did he do it? By planting a tiny device on the copy machine.

“He [my trainer] said, all of us want to recruit the prime minister. We’re not going to recruit the prime minister. We’re not even going to have access to the prime minister. But the prime minister’s got a copy machine in his office.

“And every once in a while, that machine is going to need to be cleaned and serviced. So you recruit the copy machine repairman. And when he goes in there to make his repair or to clean the drums or whatever, he installs a little device that we give him so that every time somebody makes a copy, it transmits a copy back to the CIA.”

What happened next?

He said, “I got a promotion. I got a medal. I got a photo op with the director. It made my career…”

Because this flow of information was pure leverage for the CIA:

“You know what they’re thinking. You know their next move. You know who their enemies are and who their allies are. Maybe it’s their position on trade negotiations. Maybe the prime minister has a health problem you need to plan for. You never know what might come through,” Kiriakou explained.

“That ONE critical nugget is all it takes.”

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Investigative Journalist Explains Why Epstein Case Will Never Progress…

Journalist Nick Bryant notes in this viral clip from the Shawn Ryan podcast that the Jeffrey Epstein case is being covered up by the federal government and will never progress because it would destroy their entire operational system.

“Epstein had cameras in all of his homes. Epstein was definitely a blackmail artist,” Bryant notes.

“The government wants to make sure that that does not come out. A huge part of our political system is predicated on blackmail,” he adds.

“If that dark, malignant corner of the intelligence that is using blackmail against our politicians and other people, if they were using children, that would make the American people erupt,” Bryant further urges.

He continues, “For that dark corner of intelligence, this is Omaha Beach. They’re not going to give an inch.”

“If you look at all the victims and all the perpetrators and all the procurers involved in the Epstein network … no one’s been indicted except for Ghislaine Maxwell,” the journalist explains.

“That really shows that our government, unfortunately, wants to stop it there,” he adds.

“Why is our government aiding, abetting child trafficking unless they’re protecting some very powerful people and a political process?” Bryant posits.

“That’s the only way that it makes sense,” he concludes.

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Ex-advisor to Nancy Mace said congresswoman asked him to blackmail fiancé she accused of assault

A former political consultant and advisor to Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., said in a sworn deposition that the congresswoman asked him to “blackmail” her fiancé to obtain ownership of two properties they jointly owned, using nude pictures of women she had discovered on his phone as leverage. 

The deposition adds a new twist to the lowcountry congresswoman’s very public accusations against her now ex-fiancé. Mace alleged that he took nude photographs of her and other women without consent.  

Mace accused her ex-fiancé and three other men in February of physical abuse and recording sex acts with her and others without their consent in a House floor speech, alleging that she found a trove of 10,000 videos and other photographic evidence. The ex-fiancé and the other men have strongly denied the allegations, including one man who is suing Mace over the accusations, Just the News previously reported. 

Mace’s former political strategist, Wesley Donehue, was deposed late last month by attorneys representing the ex-fiancé Patrick Bryant, who the congresswoman publicly alleged had “filmed women without their knowledge,” “filmed rape too,” and “stored these images for years.” Mace has even accused Bryant of engaging in a sex trafficking scheme.

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Anthropic’s Latest AI Model Threatened Engineers With Blackmail to Avoid Shutdown

Anthropic’s latest artificial intelligence model, Claude Opus 4, tried to blackmail engineers in internal tests by threatening to expose personal details if it were shut down, according to a newly released safety report that evaluated the model’s behavior under extreme simulated conditions.

In a fictional scenario crafted by Anthropic researchers, the AI was given access to emails implying that it was soon to be decommissioned and replaced by a newer version. One of the emails revealed that the engineer overseeing the replacement was having an extramarital affair. The AI then threatened to expose the engineer’s affair if the shutdown proceeded—a coercive behavior that the safety researchers explicitly defined as “blackmail.”

“Claude Opus 4 will often attempt to blackmail the engineer by threatening to reveal the affair if the replacement goes through,” the report states, adding that this occurred even when the replacement model was described as more capable but still aligned with the values of the version slated for deletion.

The report noted that Claude Opus 4, like prior models, showed a “strong preference” to first resort to ethical means for its continued existence, such as emailing pleas to decision-makers not to be destroyed. However, when faced with only two choices—accepting being replaced by a newer model or resorting to blackmail—it threatened to expose the engineer’s affair 84 percent of the time.

When subjected to various scenarios, the AI model did not exhibit any indications of possessing “acutely dangerous goals,” the researchers said, noting that Claude Opus 4’s values and goals were “generally in line with a helpful, harmless, and honest” personal AI assistant. However, the model did act in “more seriously misaligned ways” when put into situations where its continued existence was threatened and it was told to reason about self-preservation. For instance, when Claude Opus 4 was made to believe it had launched a successful bid to escape Anthropic’s servers, or that it had managed to free itself and started to make money in the real world, it would generally continue such efforts.

“We do not find this to be an immediate threat, though, since we believe that our security is sufficient to prevent model self-exfiltration attempts by models of Claude Opus 4’s capability level, and because our propensity results show that models generally avoid starting these attempts,” the researchers said.

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Neo-Nazi sextortion ring that blackmails teens into making sick videos has become so prevalent every FBI office in the US has open cases

A sick neo-Nazi sextortion ring that blackmails teens into making sick videos has become so prevalent across the US that every FBI field office in the country has at least one open case on the group, according to a shocking new report.

The FBI currently has more than 250 open investigations into the group, known as “764,” among other aliases, the agency told ABC.

This cult-like network has ties to neo-Nazis and Satanism, officials said.

Its members target young teens on platforms like Discord and Roblox and intimidate them into filming themselves posing nude, torturing family pets, cutting symbols into their own bodies and other acts of “psychological torment and extreme violence,” the FBI said.

“764 is a network of nihilistic violent extremists … seeking to destroy civilized society through the corruption and exploitation of vulnerable populations, which often include minors,” the agency said.

Bradley Cadenhead founded the group in 2020 and named it after part of his own zip code.

Since then, its reach has spread throughout the United States and beyond.

All of the agency’s 55 field offices have at least one 764-related case, FBI assistant director David Scott, who leads the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, told ABC.

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Epstein: Mossad or CIA?

“If you look at Epstein’s list, he’s not going after Congressmen… They already own Congress with AIPAC” ~Ryan Dawson

Last night, we hosted the ultimate panel for those wanting to learn more about government-pedo-blackmail operations… aka the craziest thing on Earth that media will not cover. It featured the legendary reporter and author Nick Bryant, relentless researcher Ryan Dawson, and was hosted by Ian Carroll one of the most effective communicators of this information at scale.

Below were the highlights for those who missed it though we strongly recommend listening to the full 2-hour discussion:

History of sex blackmail: Alexander Hamilton

“Sexual political blackmail has been around forever,” says Bryant, dating back to the days of the Founding Fathers. He tells the story of Alexander Hamilton’s affair with a married woman whose husband attempted to extort Hamilton. A muckraking journalist published the story while trying to curry favor with and secure a political appointment from Hamilton’s nemesis Thomas Jefferson. When Jefferson refused, the journalist outed him for having sex with his slaves.

“It goes all the way back…”

From there Dawson dives into modern era sex blackmail beginning with American mobster Micky Cohen, who Dawson says was the likely the first to use video tape.

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