ORLANDO, Fla. – Some students from the University of Central Florida received emails from an alleged hacker requesting money, according to UCF officials. They said the hacker claimed to have video footage of the students viewing adult content that they would distribute to the students' contacts unless the payment was made.
The UCF Information Security Office tweeted a screenshot of the text of the email on Thursday. UCF spokesperson Courtney Gilmartin said the tweet was in response to some students having received the email in their student email accounts over the weekend.
"I hacked this mailbox more than six months ago," the email begins. "Through it I infected your operating system with a virus (trojan) created by me and have been monitoring you for a very long time."
A post from Aug. 7 on the UCF ISO's website warns about the email, which officials refer to as a "sextortion scam." Within the body of the email, the sender, who claims to be a "hacker" from the "darknet" claims to have access to all of the user's personal information, social media accounts and files within the computer, including their browsing history.
The sender claims to have taken a photo of the user's face through their computer's camera while they were visiting an adult website. They then threaten to release the photo as well as the rest of the user's information unless $900 is paid through a bitcoin wallet link.
Gilmartin said "these types of scams" are not new and are not real. She advised students to report the emails and refrain from clicking on any included links.
"Use smart judgment," Gilmartin said. "If something sounds too good, too ridiculous or too sketchy to be true, it likely is."
She also warned students to be aware and cautious of fraud emails and to protect banking information.
Hearing about the extortion scheme put some students on edge.
"I just think it's really messed up," Ryan Hernandez, a UCF senior majoring in economics, said. "Just going through that kind of information and using that leverage to put someone in that state of fear where they feel like they have to answer to what the person is making them to do, it's just really wrong."
The Aug. 7 announcement also included a warning about what officials call a "gift card scam." According to the warning, the scam impersonates someone who the recipient knows, asking for photos of purchased gift cards. It is unclear if any students recently received those emails in addition to or instead of the "sextortion" ones.
This is not the first time UCF has encountered issues with cybersecurity. The Social Security numbers of over 60,000 students, staff and faculty members were compromised through the school's database in 2016. Notifying those affected by that breach cost UCF over $100,000. The costs incurred by the response to the recent emails are currently unknown.
Full email below: