According to an alert sent to U.S. companies to inform them about the latest updates in the cybersecurity sphere, the FBI has been aware of incidents since February 2020, where Doppelpaymer has cold-called companies to intimidate victims by demanding them to pay a crypto ransom. The intimidation and harassment, which had escalated to rude language, include threats to send individuals to the victims’ homes if they don’t pay for the demanded money in the ransomware attack deployed by the gang.
Ransomware gangs demand bitcoin from victims.
The FBI described Doppelpaymer as a group of threat actors that often demand between six and seven-figure ransoms in bitcoin from victims. If victims don’t pay, then they start to exfiltrate part of the stolen data and make “follow-on telephone calls to victims to further pressure them to make ransom payments.” According to the FBI, the group of hackers usually target healthcare sectors, emergency, and education across the globe, but they had been heavily active since June last year. Crypto scams have increased around the world this year amid the ongoing global pandemic.
FBI warned about the increase in crypto scams this year.
Earlier this year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had issued a warning about the potential increase in crypto scams this year amid the ongoing global pandemic. There is a recall of an incident related to Doppelpaymer and its cold-calling tactics to harass victims in the recent alert. In one case, an actor, using a spoofed US-based telephone number while claiming to be located in North Korea, threatened to leak or sell data from an identified business if the business did not pay the ransom, the FBI noted.
