7 ms·
We see some of this with just normal spear phishing against companies. The "single click" thing is reasonably common, it makes things a bit harder to catch as o
by RL_Quine 5y ago
We see some of this with just normal spear phishing against companies. The "single click" thing is reasonably common, it makes things a bit harder to catch as often the clickthrough will change to whatever is being spoofed in the first place. A homophone ycornbinator.com would serve the malware first time, then next time it would send a permanent redirect. Unique IDs you'll see in things like spam SMS, both to work around automated blacklisting, but also to work out who clicked through and who might be a potential mark the next time even if they didn't completely fall for the scam.
Most of what we got was recycled RAT malware with various packers though, it didn't trend towards being particularly interesting because you usually don't need to be to catch people, at least that's my impression. Maybe it's bad toupee fallacy.
- mot0rola 5y agoI am receiving increased SMS spam past week. Is connected to this exploit? Msgs are all different domains with unique ID appended.
- samsonradu 5y agoMe too, receiving spam job offers with bit.ly links.
- xunn0026 5y agoI too saw one of these. Very odd since I was expecting a note about a job.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y agoDon’t reply to those SMS. Your geolocation can be derived from your reply, even a STOP or UNSUBSCRIBE reply.
- akouri 5y agoCan you explain how this works if you don't click any links?
- TedDoesntTalk 5y agoI read about it on HN some months ago. I don’t recall if it was in comments or an article. But I read the info and sources and was convinced enough at the time. I’m sorry I didn’t save the original info. I’ll try some googling “geolocation from SMS” and see what I can find.
- daenz 5y agoPresumably if they have the number to text to, they already roughly know the geolocation for most people, through the area code.
- huntsman 5y agoProbably not. No signs that this is linked to any mass activity.
- ipaddr 5y agoTax time
- jorvi 5y agoHearing Americans regularly complain about SMS and robocall spam still blows my European mind. I haven't received a single spam call or SMS in my life, ever. Back in the 90s and early 2000s the worst that could happen was, say, texting a commercial number to get a polyphone ringtone, and that actually being a subscription. But obviously that is something you have to initiate first, not something passive.
- illiac786 5y agoI live in Germany and I get a lot of spam calls and spam SMS. It's always in waves. Some days I stop answering calls if I don't recognise the number, because its one of these days where Interpol has informwd me already three times that my identity was stolen and I have to give them all my details to fix this ..... They're very patient at Interpol, I keep hanging up on them and they never give up.
- eru 5y agoWhen I have a spammer/scammer on the phone (and I actually picked up), I usually just put my phone on mute and stop talking to them. They waste a bit more time that way before they hang up (without more effort from me).
- ge96 5y agoSide anecdote, I was taking to some sales people and they mentioned this concept of "ringless voicemails" ugh idk why people have no shame.
- eru 5y agoI solve that problem by just not having any voicemail box.
- batch12 5y agoI try to help them out by letting them know that I have been trying to reach them about their car's extended warranty.
- wolverine876 5y agoThanks for the input. A nit, sorry, but maybe relevant to readers learning a little about anti-phishing: homophones sound the same ('-phone' refers to sound, like telephone) but differ in meaning, such as 'write' and 'right'. I don't know the term for ycombinator.com / ycornbinator.com, which is a real problem, of course.
- chrismarlow9 5y agoIt's a homoglyph https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoglyph https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoglyph Typically used via poorly named idn homograph attacks https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDN_homograph_attack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDN_homograph_attack
- thaumasiotes 5y agoTechnically ycornbinator.com is just a lookalike. Homographs look exactly the same. (And of course "homograph" ["same writing" or "same picture"] is a better name than "homoglyph" ["same carving"].)
- chrismarlow9 5y agoThat's fair I'm not really one for jargon and whatnot (I think it can actually become less useful if the goal is just to communicate something to a person), but the first line in wiki says: > a homoglyph is one of two or more graphemes, characters, or glyphs with shapes that appear identical or very similar. "Very similar" and "two or more" being the key words. As for homograph I found homoglyph by reading the wiki and it saying homoglyph is more appropriate. (Insert obligatory "wiki it's not always accurate etc etc"). Overall I'd take either one and personally don't care. Just trying to match what you're saying with what I'm reading and make sense of where the truth is.
- wolverine876 5y ago> (Insert obligatory "wiki it's not always accurate etc etc"). Overall I'd take either one and personally don't care. Just trying to match what you're saying with what I'm reading and make sense of where the truth is. Diving in (even if the parent doesn't care :) ): The last sentence is the real challenge: Meanings depend 100% on writer and reader understandings. If two agree that 'homograph' means 'chicken poop', as long as they're the only ones communicating then 'chicken poop' it is; but if someone else reads it, our language subsystem fails. Some dictionaries influence meaning by being prescriptive (e.g., American Heritage, IIRC); others report what has been understood by being descriptive (e.g., Oxford). The problem is, Wikipedia is neither: It represents the understandings of a few editors of unknown knowledge; it is neither descriptive nor prescriptive and we quickly get into chicken poop scenarios. * Homograph, report Merriam-Webster and Oxford, means words with the same spelling but different meanings (or origin or pronunciation), e.g., the bow of a ship and a bow and arrow. * Homoglyph doesn't appear in Oxford, Merriam-Webster, American Heritage, or any others (per Wordnik and OneLook), except Wiktionary. Wiktionary descriptively traces the word back to 1938 (though maybe with a different meaning in that case) and says it means a glyph with the same or similar appearance but different meaning. That still doesn't define a term for the entire string "ycornbinator.com", only the "rn", but close enough!