Criminals at the moment are texting T-Cellular and Verizon workers on their private and work telephones, attempting to tempt them with money to carry out SIM swaps.
The focused workers have shared screenshots of messages providing $300 to these keen to assist the senders of their felony endeavors.
In accordance with many studies, that is a part of a marketing campaign focused at present and former cell service staff who might have entry to the programs required to carry out a SIM swap.
“Myself and a group of former employees all got the same message, all from different numbers and with different verbiage,” one of many focused individuals mentioned.
The attackers’ messages declare the supply of the contact info is an worker listing, as first noticed by The Cellular Report.
“I got your number from the T-Mo employee directory. I’m looking to pay someone up to $300 per sim swap done, if you’re interested, reply and we can talk,” the criminals say within the messages.
Different texts seen by BleepingComputer request workers contact the menace actor on Telegram if they’re within the supply.
Whereas it was initially believed that these texts had been solely concentrating on T-Cellular workers, Verizon workers additionally acknowledged that had been receiving variations of the identical textual content.
T-Cellular informed BleepingComputer that they’re investigating the textual content messages however careworn they didn’t undergo one other breach.
”We did not have a systems breach. We continue to investigate these messages that are being sent to solicit illegal activity. We understand other wireless providers have reported similar messages,” T-Cellular informed BleepingComputer.
A Verizon spokesperson was not instantly obtainable for remark when BleepingComputer reached out earlier in the present day.
SIM swap surge results in new guidelines
In SIM swap assaults, criminals trick a sufferer’s wi-fi service into rerouting their service to a tool managed by the fraudster.
Profitable assaults can result in unauthorized entry to non-public accounts and delicate info, id theft, monetary losses, and important emotional misery for the victims.
In February 2022, the FBI warned that criminals had been rising SIM swap assaults to steal thousands and thousands by hijacking victims’ telephone numbers.
The legislation enforcement company additionally revealed in its annual Web Crime Grievance Heart (IC3) report that People filed 1,075 SIM-swapping complaints in 2023, with adjusted losses of $48,798,103.
Final yr, the FBI additionally acquired 2,026 complaints about SIM-swapping assaults linked to losses of $72,652,571. In distinction, solely 320 complaints reporting SIM swapping incidents with losses of roughly $12 million had been filed between January 2018 and December 2020.
In November, the Federal Communications Fee (FCC) revealed new guidelines to defend People from SIM-swapping assaults in response to this surging wave of shopper complaints.
Below the brand new laws, carriers should implement safe authentication procedures earlier than transferring clients’ telephone numbers to completely different gadgets or suppliers. They have to additionally warn them each time a SIM change or port-out request happens on their accounts.
