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[ In a world of risk, know who to trust ] |
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Hackers use cell phones to defraud users
Websense security company has cautioned people that hackers have a new scheme of trying to get people to go to bogus websites using text messages via mobile phones.
How it works is that the fraudsters send a message to the victims' cellular telephones. The message thanks the target for signing up with an online dating service and tells them that they are going to be charged US$2 every day on their phone bill. The only way to stop this is to cancel their subscription over the Internet.
The website that they are instructed to visit tells the victim to download a Trojan Horse (a programme that is disguised to look like something else). The website even goes as far as to say how the user should bypass the security alerts that Internet Explorer will give them.
When the user installs the Trojan, the PC becomes a "zombie" machine - a machine that can be controlled from another location or remotely. These zombies then form a BotNet, which is a network of remotely controlled machines that can be used to launch distributed denial-of-service attacks against specific websites.
According to Ross Paul of Websense this is a new approach to phishing.
"Basically, they're taking a social engineering attack vector with a lot of users," he says.
So far Websense has been unable to release information about the identity of those responsible. They also could not say what the impact of the attack was as is it problematic to monitor botnet activity across networks.
Read the original article here
http://news.com.com/Zombie builders send out phone texts/2100-7349_3-6087523.html?tag=cd.hed
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