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:

  • When Cyberattacks Pack a Physical Punch

    February 18, 2019

    Physical security goes hand in hand with cyberdefense. What happens when – as we see all too often – the physical side is overlooked? More than one in 10 data breaches now involve “physical actions,” according to a recent report. These include leveraging physical  devices to aid an attack, but also hacks that involve breaking into hardware ...

  • Cisco’s warning: Patch this default Network Assurance Engine password bug

    February 13, 2019

    Cisco is urging customers to install an update that fixes a high-severity issue affecting its Network Assurance Engine (NAE) for managing data-center networks. The bug, tracked as CVE-2019-1688, could allow an attacker to use a flaw in the password-management system of NAE to knock out an NAE server and cause a denial of service. NAE is an ...

  • New Astaroth Trojan Variant Exploits Anti-Malware Software to Steal Info

    February 13, 2019

    A new Astaroth Trojan campaign targeting Brazil and European countries is currently exploiting the Avast antivirus and security software developed by GAS Tecnologia to steal information and load malicious modules. According to Cybereason’s Nocturnus team which discovered the new Astaroth strain, just like previous instalments, the malware uses “legitimate, built-in Windows OS processes to perform malicious activities and deliver a payload without being ...

  • Snapd Flaw Lets Attackers Gain Root Access On Linux Systems

    February 13, 2019

    Ubuntu and some other Linux distributions suffer from a severe privilege escalation vulnerability that could allow a local attacker or a malicious program to obtain root privileges and total control over the targeted system. Dubbed “Dirty_Sock” and identified as CVE-2019-7304, the vulnerability was discovered by security researcher Chris Moberly, who privately disclosed it to Canonical, the maker ...

  • Trickbot Adds Remote Application Credential-Grabbing Capabilities to Its Repertoire

    February 12, 2019

    In November 2018, we covered a Trickbot variant that came with a password-grabbing module, which allowed it to steal credentials from numerous applications. In January 2019, we saw Trickbot (detected as TrojanSpy.Win32.TRICKBOT.AZ and Trojan.Win32.MERETAM.AD) with new capabilities added to its already extensive bag of tricks. Its authors clearly aren’t done updating Trickbot — we recently found a ...

  • Windows App Runs on Mac, Downloads Info Stealer and Adware

    February 11, 2019

    EXE is the official executable file format used for Windows to signify that they only run on Windows platforms, and to serve as a security feature. By default, attempting to run an EXE file on a Mac or Linux OS will only show an error notification. However, we found EXE files in the wild delivering a ...