Tag Archives: SMS Flooder

Cybercriminals abuse major U.S SMS gateways, release DIY Mail-to-SMS flooders

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By Dancho Danchev

Largely driven by a widespread adoption of growth and efficiency oriented strategies applied by cybercriminals within the entire spectrum of the cybercrime ecosystem, we’ve witnessed the emergence and development of the mobile device market segment over the past few years. Motivated by the fact that more people own a mobile device than a PC, cybercriminals quickly adapted and started innovating in an attempt to capitalize on this ever-growing market segment within their portfolio of fraudulent operations.

In this post I’ll profile a DIY Mail-to-SMS flooder that’s abusing a popular feature offered by international and U.S based mobile carriers – the ability to SMS any number through an email message. The DIY SMS flooder exclusively targets U.S users.

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Russian cybercriminals release new DIY SMS flooder

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By Dancho Danchev

Just like in every market, in the underground ecosystem demand too, meets supply on a regular basis.

Thanks to the systematically released DIY SMS flooding applications, cybercriminals have successfully transformed this market segment into a growing and professionally oriented niche market. From the active abuse of the features offered by legitimate infrastructure providers such as ICQ and Skype, to the abuse of Web-based SMS sending gateways, cybercriminals continue developing and releasing point’n'click DIY SMS flooding tools.

In this post, I’ll profile one of the most recently released DIY SMS flooders, this time relying on 23 publicly available SMS-sending Web services, primarily located in Russia.

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New Russian DIY SMS flooder using ICQ’s SMS sending feature spotted in the wild

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By Dancho Danchev

In order to emphasize on the growing trend of cybercriminals abusing legitimate infrastructure for their malicious purposes, last week, I profiled a DIY SMS flooder using Skype’s SMS-sending capability to launch a DoS (denial of service attack) against a user’s mobile device.

This week, I’ll continue providing factual evidence for the emergence of this trend, by profiling yet another recently released DIY SMS flooder, this time abusing ICQ’s sms-sending feature.

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Cybercriminals abuse Skype’s SMS sending feature, release DIY SMS flooders

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By Dancho Danchev

Cybercriminals are masters of abusing legitimate infrastructure for their malicious purposes. From phishing sites and Black Hole exploit kit landing URLs hosted on compromised servers, abuse of legitimate web email service providers’ trusted DKIM verified ecosystem, to the systematic release of DIY spamming tools utilizing a publicly obtainable database of user names as potential “touch points”, cybercriminals are on the top of their game.

In this post, I’ll profile a recently advertised DIY SMS flooder using Skype’s infrastructure for disseminating the messages, and assess the potential impact it could have on end and corporate users.

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