Smishing attacks see a sharp increase ahead of Black Friday
The number of phishing text or attacks almost doubled when compared to last year’s shopping season because cyber criminals are growing black Friday and cyber monday buyers.
According to proofpoint, more than two-thirds of all SMS messages are sent throughout the world are related in several forms for delivery of orders or retail brands of consumers. Because consumers become more familiar with interacting with business through text messages, cyber criminals have jumped on the opportunity to imitate popular brands and shipping companies via SMS.
They now use stain attacks that claim to come from leading companies as bait in an effort to steal payment information and personal details from unsuspecting targets. While many of these feeds request credit card information to solve problems that are allegedly related to purchases or delivery of non-existing items, the attacker also tries to steal personal information through the URL or layout pages that are attractive in other cases.
In a new blog post, the proofpoint highlights the package “Bird Black Friday” deliver a stain attack where the landing page presents a packet notification that looks authentic. However, clicking the “Find my package” button and continues further on the site leads to the request of personal information from potential victims including their names, post information and e-mail addresses.
Switch from Email to SMS
Although email users gradually learn that opening attachments from foreigners, clicking on the questioned link and visiting web pages with double redirect is risky behavior, the same cannot be said for cellular users who are not too careful.
For example, text messages have an open level of 98 percent and the recipient opens 90 percent of their message within three minutes. At the same time, the text message has a click-thru level eight times higher than email.
To avoid victims of fraud or other sms-based frauds this holiday season, cellular users must be vigilant and skeptical with an award, price, and unexpected or no viable vacation-based offerings and alert to shipping notice.
Proofpoint recommends that cellular users are looking for suspicious text messages, carefully consider risk before giving their cellphone number to business, avoid opening links in messages directly and instead copy them into their browser and be careful when downloading and installing new software to their Android smartphone or iPhone.
