Poor Grammar Makes For a Poor Extortion Campaign; "You Under Attack" Pay Us "Before Make Drama"

Bitdefender Antispam Lab spotted an amusing extortion campaign yesterday. While many extortion scams use petty scare tactics to fool recipients into paying up, you can”t be worried if you don”t understand the scammer’s e-mail.

Even though the subject of the email hints at a cyber-attack, the message is riddled with so many grammar and spelling mistakes that you probably need a second or even third read to get the gist of it.

The scammer poses as the infamous DD4BC cybercriminal group, citing the Neteller DDoS attack in an attempt to panic recipients. Following this brief showoff, the scammer reveals his true intent.

“Your sites are going under attack unless you pay 0.01 Bitcoin. [Approx Value 100 usd]”, the email reads.

Although this initial threat is fairly straightforward, what follows is quite confusing. This considerate scammer says the attack is in progress, and that it”s futile for you to try stopping it. However, a quick check of your so-called website can prove otherwise.

You are given 43 hours to acquire 0.01 BTC to make the transfer, emphasizing that this is cheap one-time offer, which will increase if the demands are ignored.

“Please note that it will not be easy to mitigate our attack, because our current UDP flood power is 400-500 Gbps, so don”t even bother,” the scammer said. “Right now we are running small demonstrative attack.Don”t worry, it will stop in 1 hour. It”s just to prove that we are serious. We are aware that you probably don”t have 0.01 BTC at the moment, so we are giving you 43 hours to get it and pay us. Current price of 0.01 BTC is about ONLY 100 Usd [USD], Give You VARIANTso we are cheap,at the moment. But if you ignore us, price will increase”.

Who knew that scammers could be so thoughtful? Should recipients have any questions, they are free to submit inquiries via email. After a quick deadline reminder, and repeating that payment will increase, the scammer remains polite.

“It”s a one-time payment. Pay and you will not hear from us ever again! We do bad things, but we keep our word.Thank you. Give You Time To Pay 1 Transaction.”

Although this extortion attempt put a smile on our face, similar campaigns are known to be quite profitable for scammers. As with any scam or unsolicited email, the best course of action is to ignore and delete it as soon as possible. If you are tempted to read it, pay attention to spelling mistakes, as they are the first signs of a scam. Never respond to a scammer”s demands, and definitely do not reply to the message.

Most importantly, payment does not guarantee that scammers will not try to blackmail you again. Before deleting the message, you can also report the scam to local authorities and email service provider.