This week, thousands of New Yorkers received scam texts after hackers broke into their state’s official text messaging system, according to a report from NBC News.
New York’s Office of Information Technology Services told NBC News that “about 188,000 people received text messages from the state and about 160,000 people received a scam text.”
are scam texts on the riseBy now, you’ve probably been impressed by them, Text messages from scammers claiming they need your information for package delivery, Or maybe there’s been a mysterious charge on your bank account, We’ve also reported on DMV scam texts, inflation refund scam texts, wrong number messages, and the list goes on,
However, this latest scam text campaign shows how much the issue is growing.
This week, a mobile text messaging service called Mobile Commons, which has clients such as the New York state government, the charity Catholic Relief Services, and the progressive organizing group Fight for a Union, was hacked. And once Mobile Commons’ systems were breached, hackers weaponized the service to send scam texts to people who had signed up for text message updates from those organizations.
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“On the evening of Monday, November 10, an unauthorized third party gained illegal access to our platform via a spear phishing attack or similar social engineering method,” Mobile Commons said in a statement. nbc news“The intruder’s access was active for a four-hour period ending at 12:10 a,m, on November 11 before being identified and removed, During this time, multiple attempts were made to send spam messages through our systems, A limited number of these messages reached customers before our security protocols identified and shut down the malicious activity,”
According to NBC News, the scam messages sent urged users to call a toll-free number in reference to declined bank transactions involving large amounts of money. Of course, the transaction did not exist. The hacker’s objective is to persuade their target to call this number, believing it to be a legitimate text from their banking institution, and then persuade the user to complete an actual transaction to fix the problem. In fact, that legitimate transaction will not go to the bank or to a non-existent vendor, but to scammers.
Mobile Commons told NBC News that no user information was accessed in the breach. However, the company declined to disclose how many customers received scam messages.
It is also unclear how many people fell for this scam and suffered financial loss as a result.
Mashable wants to remind readers that the safest course of action is to never interact with phone numbers or links claiming to be from a financial institution. Readers should contact the bank or credit company directly through their official phone number to check the validity of any such text messages.