Australian students targeted by international sextortion scammers demanding bitcoin ransoms

Security experts are warning Australian students they are being actively targeted by international sextortion scammers, with organised crime gangs blackmailing students and scaring them into paying money.

Thousands of university students have been caught out by organised crime syndicates flooding their inboxes with blackmail demands as part of the latest international sextortion scam.

“The criminals basically are pretending that they’ve got compromising footage,” cyber security expert Garrett O’Hara explained.

The threatening emails from scammers convince students they’ve been hacked, telling victims photos and videos have been stolen from their devices or lewd pictures taken remotely.

“Their threat is they’re going to expose that imagery or the videos potentially and they’re then asked to pay a ransom unfortunately through bitcoin,” O’Hara said.

Australian students are seen as soft targets, often with weak passwords and firewalls, making them particularly vulnerable to these attacks.

Wayne Holdsworth, whose son Mac was a sextortion victim who took his own life, met with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese about the crisis.

“I call them terrorists because they terrorise young people. Their target market is kids between eight and 20 and my son was one of them,” Holdsworth said.

He said university students are particularly susceptible because “they’re lonely, some people that are there for the first time without any friends and they’re very susceptible.”

The criminals prey on children’s embarrassment, knowing victims probably won’t tell adults about the situation.

“In many cases, they feel ashamed and they feel embarrassed because they’ve shared something very intimate so they don’t tell their parents when they get caught in this trap,” Holdsworth explained.

“This is critical. This is urgent. As every day goes by, we know of 100 people that are sexually extorted online that we know of.”

Victims are urged not to panic, to assume the threats are fake, and not to pay ransoms but report the threat to authorities at www.cyber.gov.au.

Holdsworth’s advice is clear: “If they get caught in the trap, speak to their parents or their friends or family immediately and immediately block them.”