CyberScoop reports that social engineering, SIM swapping, and other cybercrime techniques have been exploited by global threat collective The Com and child sextortion operation 764 in facilitating crimes against individuals ages 10 and up.
Aside from luring children into providing sexually explicit photos of themselves, such methods — which have been detailed by The Com-adjacent group 6996 in "The Bible" on Telegram — have also been used to force youths into harming family members and animals, as well as committing suicide, an intelligence report from the Joint Regional Intelligence Center and the Central California Intelligence Center showed. "6996 appears to be similar to online child exploitation group, 764, which has been implicated in coercing minors to self-harm, including suicide; animal cruelty; and the production of child sexual abuse material," said the report. Such findings come after a federal prosecutor noted an ongoing federal investigation into 764. "It's not premised on the idea of child pornography, it's premised on the idea of collapsing society and they do it through animal cruelty and they do it through swatting and sextortion," said the prosecutor.
