Ever Been Blackmailed By A Hacker?

Or maybe just someone pretending to be a hacker. I had an email from someone claiming to be a hacker yesterday claiming that they had found a security flaw on my site and asking for money to let me know what it was so that it couldn't be exploited.

Here is the message:

The mistake I made was to reply to the message, if I hadn't replied then the hacker/scammer would have assumed that the site was no longer being maintained and that he was wasting his time.

After sending a reply saying basically that I wasn't interested, this was the next response I received:

"What Do You Think If I Deface And Hijacked Your Domain Would You Go To Yola And Tell Him It Was Your Fault That Hacker Hijacked My Domain ? Do You Want To See Trailer ?"

I have not responded to this email and am pretty sure that will be the end of it. I did however make sure I had a recent backup of my site saved and checked my security just in case he was a real hacker.

If my site does get hacked I will post about it here.

The main reason for this post is to warn everyone of what looks to be a scam so that if any of you get a message from anyone claiming to be a hacker, you just delete it without responding.

Any site hosted at WA is backed up regularly, but the security of your site is your responsibility, make sure you use hard to guess passwords and consider adding a 2 factor authentication plugin.

As always, please leave comments and feedback below.