1 million victims, 17,500 fake sites: Google takes on toll-fee scammers


A Phishing-as-a-Service (PhaaS) platform based in China, known as “Lighthouse,” is the subject of a new Google lawsuit.

Lighthouse enables smishing (SMS phishing) campaigns, and if you’re in the US there is a good chance you’ve seen their texts about a small amount you supposedly owe in toll fees. Here’s an example of a toll-fee scam text:

Read more…
Source: Mawarebytes Labs


Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox


Related:

  • Cybercrime gang adds new tactics to credit card data-stealing campaign

    July 23, 2019

    A hacking operation has deployed new malware in the latest evolution of its campaign to make money by stealing credit card data. The FIN8 cybercrime group was first identified in January 2016, and typically targets point-of-sale (POS) systems with malware attacks designed to steal credit card information, which is then sold on for profit on dark ...

  • Popular Samsung, LG Android Phones Open to ‘Spearphone’ Eavesdropping

    July 23, 2019

    A Spearphone attacker can use the accelerometer in LG and Samsung phones to remotely eavesdrop on any audio that’s played on speakerphone, including calls, music and voice assistant responses. A new way to eavesdrop on people’s mobile phone calls has come to light in the form of Spearphone – an attack that makes use of Android ...

  • On the IoT road: perks, benefits and security of moving smartly

    July 22, 2019

    Kaspersky has repeatedly investigated security issues related to IoT technologies (for instance, here, or here). Earlier this year our experts have even gained foothold in the security of biomechanical prosthetic devices. The same implies to smart car security: our own research has indicated that there are number of issues—look here or here. This year, we decided to continue our tradition of small-scale experiments with security ...

  • Critical RCE Flaw in Palo Alto Gateways Hits Uber

    July 22, 2019

    A remote code-execution (RCE) vulnerability has been uncovered in the GlobalProtect portal and GlobalProtect Gateway interface security products from Palo Alto Networks. It’s an unusual zero-day case, having been previously unknown but inadvertently fixed in later releases — but some large companies could still be impacted, including Uber. The gateways provide virtual private network (VPN) access to ...

  • French army will employ sci-fi writers to predict cyber threats

    July 22, 2019

    The French military is to assemble a team of science fiction writers to imagine possible future cyber threats and inject innovation into cyber defence. This will be a small group, known as the “Red Team” which will be comprised of four or five science fiction writers and or futurists. The team will be hired to “propose ...

  • Old Tools for New Money: URL Spreading Shellbot and XMRig Using 17-year old XHide

    July 19, 2019

    One of our honeypots detected a threat that propagates by scanning for open ports and brute forcing weak credentials, installing a Monero cryptocurrency miner and a Perl-based IRC backdoor as the final payload. The miner process is hidden using XHide Process Faker, a 17-year old open source tool used to fake the name of a ...