Spanish Police Arrest SIM Swappers Who Stole Money from Victims Bank Accounts

Spain's National Police Agency, the Policía Nacional, said last week it dismantled an unnamed cybercriminal organization and arrested eight individuals in connection with a series of SIM swapping attacks that were carried out with the goal of financial fraud. The suspects of the crime ring...

Sharp SIM-Swapping Spike Causes $68M in Losses

SIM-swapping – the practice of duping mobile carriers into switching a target’s phone services to an attacker-controlled phone – is on the rise, the Feds are warning – leading to millions in losses for consumers who found their bank accounts drained and other accounts taken over. Subscriber...

Apple’s Private Relay Is Being Blocked

Some European cell phone carriers, and now T-Mobile, are blocking Apples Private Relay anonymous browsing feature. This could be an interesting battle to watch. Slashdot thread...

GSD-2022-1000065 Various phone carriers are blocking Apples Private Relay when users connect via cellular data.

Various phone carriers are blocking Apples Private Relay when users connect via cellular data. Many of the carriers claim "The letter said that Private Relay cuts off networks and servers from accessing “vital network data and metadata” and will have “significant consequences in terms of...

A Simple Software Fix Could Limit Location Data Sharing

Carriers know where you are every time your phone reconnects to the cell network—but with Pretty Good Phone Privacy, they wouldn’t have to...

Critical Juniper Bug Allows DoS, RCE Against Carrier Networks

A critical remote code-execution vulnerability in Juniper Networks’ Steel-Belted Radius SBR Carrier Edition lays open wireless carrier and fixed operator networks to tampering. The SBR Carrier server is used by telecom carriers to manage policies for how subscribers access their networks – by...

Flubot Spyware Spreading Through Android Devices

Android mobile phone users across the U.K. and Europe are being targeted by text messages containing a particularly nasty piece of spyware called “Flubot,” according to the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre. And the U.S. could be the next target. Victims are asked to download a fake app from ...

FCC Proposes to Fine Wireless Carriers $200M for Selling Customer Location Data

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission FCC today proposed fines of more than $200 million against the nation's four largest wireless carriers for selling access to their customers' location information without taking adequate precautions to prevent unauthorized access to that data. While the...

Lawmakers Prod FCC to Act on SIM Swapping

Crooks have stolen tens of millions of dollars and other valuable commodities from thousands of consumers via "SIM swapping," a particularly invasive form of fraud that involves tricking a target's mobile carrier into transferring someone's wireless service to a device they control. But the U.S...

The FCC's Push to Purge Huawei From US Networks

The rural carriers who rely on Huawei are wary of a costly “rip and replace” effort...

Why Many People Got Mysterious Valentine’s Day Texts Today

The issue was reportedly caused by a maintenance update made to “messaging platforms of multiple carriers in the US."...

Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile to replace SMS with RCS Messaging in 2020

Mobile carriers in the United States will finally offer a universal cross-carrier communication standard for the next-generation RCS messaging service that is meant to replace SMS and has the potential to change the way consumers interact with brands for years to come. All major United States...

TrickBot adds new trick to its arsenal: tampering with trusted texts

Researchers from Dell Secureworks saw a new feature in TrickBot that allows it to tamper with the web sessions of users who have certain mobile carriers. According to a blog post that they published early last week, TrickBot can do this by "intercepting network traffic before it is rendered by a...

TrickBot Targets Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint Users to Siphon PINs

The TrickBot malware, known previously for targeting U.S. banks, is now setting a bullseye on users of U.S.-based mobile carriers, including Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile and Sprint, to launch SIM swapping attacks. Researchers with Dell’s Secureworks research team warned that they have observed the...

The Rise of “Bulletproof” Residential Networks

Cybercrooks increasingly are anonymizing their malicious traffic by routing it through residential broadband and wireless data connections. Traditionally, those connections have been mainly hacked computers, mobile phones, or home routers. But this story is about so-called "bulletproof residentia...

How AT&T Insiders Were Bribed to 'Unlock' Millions of Phones

One cybersecurity threat that’s proven difficult for wireless carriers to combat? Their own employees...

Threat Source newsletter (June 27, 2019)

Newsletter compiled by Jonathan Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s Threat Source newsletter — the perfect place to get caught up on all things Talos from the past week. You never want to fall behind on Beers with Talos. So make sure to listen to the latest episode on your commute home today. This...

Cellular networks worldwide hit by hackers in espionage attempt

By Uzair Amir Cybereason, an Israeli-US security firm based in Boston, has reported that certain nation-state hackers managed to compromise the systems of no less than ten cellular carriers across the globe to steal metadata of specific users. Without naming anyone, the company claims that the...

A Likely Chinese Hacker Crew Targeted 10 Phone Carriers to Steal Metadata

In one case, they stole the location and call record data of 20 specific individuals...

China’s BGP rerouting leaves European mobile carriers stranded for 2 hours

By Uzair Amir On Thursday, June 6th 9:43 am UTC, Europe’s leading mobile providers received a shock when a large chunk of the traffic destined to reach them was misdirected or rerouted to another path by the network of a Chinese state-operated telecom firm, China Telecom. The misdirection of the...