This has been happening for a little bit of time now. I receive an email from my own account and the message says I’ve been hacked. They also say they’ve made videos of me jerking off to weird porn and for a payment of several hundred in bitcoin they won’t release the video. I just erase the emails because I know its crap, but how do they make it seem to originate from my own account?
In: Technology
Hey OP. I will give a brief explanation as to how an email can be sent with any email address, but most importantly I will give you the **actual reason you are receiving those emails** saying you have been hacked.
# 1) Sending an email from any email address
It is fairly simple: at no point does the SMTP protocol check if you indeed have the rights to use this email address to send an email. You can simply spoof the “FROM:” field of an email to send it with any email address and it will go through. However, most email clients will check the email address against the server from which it was sent, and tell you something is off.
# 2) Your credentials, like millions of other people’s, are part of the “[Collection #1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collection_No._1)” data breach
Back in January of this year, a huge collection of passwords leaked out on hacking forums, under the names **Collection #1**, **Collection #2**, **Collection #3**, **Collection #4**, **Collection #5**.Containing more than 800 GB of data, this leak is a massive one. I managed to download it in full, and found out my old password was included in them, as well as a few different email addresses of mine, **more than 10 times**. Those passwords are from different sources: hacked platforms like LinkedIn, phishing, bruteforcing, etc.
Here is a screenshot of the 5 folders in my PC and their total size (I had to remove some for lack of space) :[http://puu.sh/DvLLd/f7fa4480fb.png](http://puu.sh/DvLLd/f7fa4480fb.png)
Using this collection, malicious people started sending emails using the method described in 1) to people, making them believe they were hacked. **I, too, received such emails**. In some of them was even included the password of mine that was leaked in the collection, clearly indicating where those malicious people are getting their information.
# 3) Useful links
To check if your email address appears in one of the several data leaks: [https://haveibeenpwned.com/](https://haveibeenpwned.com/)
To check if your password appears in one of them: [https://haveibeenpwned.com/Passwords](https://haveibeenpwned.com/Passwords)
Hope this will enlighten you a little bit, and don’t hesitate to ask any questions.
Latest Answers