#phonereputation

Welcome back to your weekly summary from the Vishing and Smishing front. After several calm weeks we’ve seen campaigns resume on regular intensity, targeting Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase, PNC Bank, Palametto FCU (CO), Boing Employee Credit Unions (WA). 

Several campaigns went through 3 or more targets in 48h, which we haven’t seen for a while. On the Vishing side activity was rather soft targeting a smaller group of Capital One (8559683131), Bank of America (7188889961), CBC FCU (CA) (8887585316) and again Boing Employee Credit Union (WA). 

AT&T and Apple account take over Smishing resumed as well. Internationally, Smishing was detected in Canada where Scotiabank and Bank of Montreal became targets, as well as Westpac (Australia).

Weekly sampling below or real-time via NumberCop’s API. Contact us for details.

And another quick summary of last week's action on the Smishing and Vishing front in the Financial Sector. New Smishing activity was on the typical to low side with targeted campaigns for Bank of America, Wells Fargo (multiple campaigns), Chase, Bank of Montreal (Canada), Natwest (UK) and Barclays (UK), Vishing however continued to pick up. 

Two numbers were particularly active (8888931773, 8885030711) impersonating Suntrust (8888931773), EECU Credit Union (8885030711) and Texans Credit Union (8885030711). Recipients of these calls were informed about their Debit or Credit card accounts being blocked and prompted for their card credentials via IVR.

Finishing an atypical calm Smishing and Vishing week 4/14-4/20. Besides a few standard FI Smishing campaigns targeting Bank of America and Wells Fargo - NUMBERCOP tracked only a handful of additional targeted campaigns namely for Firth Third Bank and Omaha Mutual (NE). On the Vishing side M&T Bank area codes were hit again (consistently using caller ID 8774637786) and Barclays nation-wide (via 8664674713).

Internationally, Bank of Montreal (Canada) and Natwest (UK) were continued targets. We collected further details that Natwest's Smishing campaign uses a Spoofed Sender ID, (instead of a hijacked Sender ID as believed earlier) for sending out Smishing text messages. With Natwest now being targeted non-stop for 2nd months it becomes evident how hard it is for an affected brand to shut down and non-compliant SMS VAS in the UK.

Within the wider Smishing news we recommend to follow a few sessions at this years RSA Security Conference taking place in San Francisco this week. In particular Cathal Mc Daid's session on Smishing (details here, presentation attached) which should be largely in line with NUMBERCOP's Spam Research.

As always please find our weekly Smishing sampling below and on our API for further details.

Quick recap as we're wrapping up a another busy Smishing and Vishing week. Targeted attacks were recorded on Wells Fargo, Bank of America, PNC Bank (Recording: bit.ly/1GIMiY5), Fifth Third Bank, HarrisBank and once again Boeing Credit Union (Recording: bit.ly/1O1lzGF).

Looking abroad NUMBERCOP detected Smishing campaigns targeting Bank of Montreal (Canada), Natwest (UK), O2 (UK), British Telecom (UK), Tesco (UK) and Bancolombia (Colombia).

Back in the US renewed Vishing activity was tracked especially in the 2nd part of last week targeting M&T Bank, Barclay Card and again Boeing Credit Union. We also saw the re-emergence of SMS Chat bots, which have been notability absent since the beginning of the year.

Weekly sampling below or realtime via our API's.