Shop E Store iPhone Farms (a mobile phone bank with a rotating temporary Apple ID) is used to send 100,000 fraudulent imessages per day.
By using iMessage rather than text, scammers can bypass spam and fraud filters implemented by mobile carriers. Scammers don’t even need technical skills to carry out attacks.
Unpaid tolls, shipping fees and other frauds
Common frauds currently making rounds include false requests for unpaid road tolls. They claim that shipping costs are required to release valuable packages from customs. Fictitious warnings about unpaid taxes.
These scams are commonly performed by email and text messages, and there is a constant cat and mouse game between criminals and ISPs and mobile carriers that are trying to detect to block suspicious text and links.
iPhone Farm sends scam imagesage
However, researchers in cybersecurity companies’ catalytic researchers have discovered that fraudsters are now turning their eyes to imessage. These messages are encrypted and cannot be detected and blocked because the network cannot view the content.
What makes things worse is that they found a Chinese platform to use for those who are willing to pay for iPhone farms.
Lucid is a sophisticated, service-based phishing (PHAAS) platform run by Chinese-speaking threat actors, targeting 169 entities in 88 countries around the world (…)
Its scalable subscription-based model allows cybercriminals to run large-scale phishing campaigns to harvest financial fraud credit card details for increased effectiveness, leverage liquids using Apple Imessage and Android RCS technology, bypass traditional SMS spam filters, and significantly increase delivery and success rates.
The group behind Lucid also includes templates that scammers can use to create compelling replicas of corporate websites such as Courier Services.
Known for developing Lucid and other PHAAS platforms, the Xinxin Group has been observed selling phishing templates designed to impersonate postal services, courier companies, road toll systems and tax refund agencies.
The catalyst contains a low quality photo (above) of one of these iPhone farms in use.
The telegram group used to sell these PHAAS attacks has over 2,000 members.
How to protect yourself
The main protection against phishing attacks are: Not once Click on the link sent by email. Always use your own bookmarks or enter a known URL.
It’s easy to see emails and messages appear to be born from a legitimate company. So don’t trust a clearly known sender. Be especially suspicious of messages urging you to act quickly to avoid fines or messages that look at the packages returned to the sender.
Highlighted accessories
Via MacWorld. Photo via Catalyst on background in Unsplash on Uriel SC.
(TagStoTRASSLATE) Security
