Chinese police arrest SMS fraud gang
By Dilip Mistry Chinese police in Dalian have seized a 14 strong gang of alleged fraudsters involved in a fake SMS plot which is believed to have netted 1 million yuan ($164,100) since October. The gang is believed to have carried out at least 10 counts of text message fraud in just over a month […]
Student gang’s weekend blitz on mobile dealers
By Shane Wilson Dealer fraud, costing an estimated $3.35 Billion a year, is one of the top five frauds perpetuated against the mobile industry. The ease with which fraudsters are able to generate considerable sums of money was recently illustrated by a gang of six London students who conned Belfast and Ballymena businesses into providing […]
Mobile hacking – the new weapon for spies and fraudsters
By Dilip Mistry Germany’s interior minister Hans-Peter Friedrich’s claims that the hacking of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone was giving rise to “conspiracy theories” underestimated the reality. US National Security Agency’s silent response to the allegations that American spies had eavesdropped on the German Chancellor’s mobile phone took another surprising twist this week. German weekly Focus […]
Email fraudsters moving to text and voice
By Shane Wilson Fraudsters are moving from email to embrace text messages (SMiShing) and voice calling (Vishing) to gather personal information or gain control of a user’s device. This shift in focus is due to advances in email spam filters and consumer awareness of email scams which makes committing email fraud more difficult. People perceive […]
Phone hackers make FBI’s most wanted list
By Andy Gent The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has added business telephone system hackers Farhan Arshad and Noor Aziz Uddin to its ‘Cyber’s Most Wanted’ list. Pakistani nationals Arshad and Uddin are wanted for their alleged involvement in an international telecommunications scheme and hacking venture to defraud individuals, telecom companies, and government entities in the United […]
Phreaking out over the cost of network hacking
By Shane Wilson Mobile network operators can globe struggle to contain efforts to defraud the networks, from wholesale and roaming frauds, to manipulation of premium rate services and the resale of hardware. According to the Communications Fraud Control Association (CFCA) such fraud amounts annually to more than $46 billion which ultimately affects legitimate users, whether […]
Roaming – the most costly type of fraud
by Dilip Mistry According to the Communications Fraud Control Association’s (CFCA) most recent fraud loss survey one of the most common types of fraud reported by operators, accounting for $6.11 Billion (USD) losses, is roaming fraud. Whether inbound, where calls are received on a different network than the home network, or outbound which is the […]
Who’s calling you?
by Andy Gent Cold calling is a nuisance, to the point that many people simply do not answer calls from numbers that they do not recognise or that do not display. With the growth in automated calls, this issue just gets more frustrating. But there is also a sinister element to some cold calls. Fraudsters […]
Let your fingers do the talking as iPhone 5 fingerprint security is hacked
By Shane Wilson Following on from last week’s attempt by Apple to popularise finger print based security on mobile phones as “a convenient and highly secure way to access your phone,” comes the news that hackers have already broken the Apple system. You can see our blog from last week on the pros and cons […]
Biometrics bolstered in the mobile space
The launch of Apple’s iPhone 5s (thoroughly covered in almost every news outlet), sees what has been widely reported as the first use of fingerprint recognition technology in mobile. Actually the Motorola Atrix, launched in 2011, also used fingerprint technology to unlock the device. If course facial recognition software has been available in Android phones […]