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Author needs to get his facts right: "SMS shortcodes that bill victims via their wireless carrier. In the U.S., we often see these attached..." versus "Reade

Author needs to get his facts right: "SMS shortcodes that bill victims via their wireless carrier. In the U.S., we often see these attached..." versus "Readers in the U.S. can rest easy, since most of these scams use specific short codes that won't work outside Russia" So, which one is it?

guard-of-terra 13y ago
Every country have a different set of shortcodes. You can't use Russian shortcodes from the US and it's not easy to harness US shortcodes for Russian resident, especially fraudster (and vice versa). That's how Eurovision voting works for example.
- zalew 13y ago
  Well, if I were a smart superscammer, which those guys probably are, I'd use geolocation and apply the code for said country. It ain't rocket science. They probably have to do it anyway to cover neighbor republics.
- babuskov 13y ago
  I'm sorry, but you're wrong. I have SMS payments for two of my games in 30+ countries worldwide. You can use the same code as long as it is free to register. But the whole code story is completely irrelevant! If malware is installed in your Android phone it can send any arbitrary short code it wants, without you noticing. What is important is the number to which you send the code, and this is different for each country (and even different for different carriers in some countries). So, a well coded malware with international support would need to know the premium payment number + code pairs for all the countries the attacker wishes to gather money from.
  - guard-of-terra 13y ago
    They should also be able to move their fradulent money away from those countries which is going to be problematic.
pohl 13y ago
These statements are not in conflict. The first one is helping readers in the U.S. recognize what the jargon "SMS shortcodes" refers to. The second one is letting the reader know that they do not need to be wary of every smartcode they see.
- babuskov 13y ago
  From the text I'm pretty sure that the author does not understand how "SMS shortcodes" are assigned. Thus, he cannot explain it to others properly. If malware is installed on your phone, you do not get to see the code (unless you have Android 4.2, which is only about 6% of the phones). The point is not to install the apps. from unknown sources, even if they look like a well known application.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]

guard-of-terra 13y ago

Every country have a different set of shortcodes. You can't use Russian shortcodes from the US and it's not easy to harness US shortcodes for Russian resident, especially fraudster (and vice versa). That's how Eurovision voting works for example.

zalew 13y ago
Well, if I were a smart superscammer, which those guys probably are, I'd use geolocation and apply the code for said country. It ain't rocket science. They probably have to do it anyway to cover neighbor republics.
babuskov 13y ago
I'm sorry, but you're wrong. I have SMS payments for two of my games in 30+ countries worldwide. You can use the same code as long as it is free to register. But the whole code story is completely irrelevant! If malware is installed in your Android phone it can send any arbitrary short code it wants, without you noticing. What is important is the number to which you send the code, and this is different for each country (and even different for different carriers in some countries). So, a well coded malware with international support would need to know the premium payment number + code pairs for all the countries the attacker wishes to gather money from.
- guard-of-terra 13y ago
  They should also be able to move their fradulent money away from those countries which is going to be problematic.

pohl 13y ago

These statements are not in conflict. The first one is helping readers in the U.S. recognize what the jargon "SMS shortcodes" refers to. The second one is letting the reader know that they do not need to be wary of every smartcode they see.

babuskov 13y ago
From the text I'm pretty sure that the author does not understand how "SMS shortcodes" are assigned. Thus, he cannot explain it to others properly. If malware is installed on your phone, you do not get to see the code (unless you have Android 4.2, which is only about 6% of the phones). The point is not to install the apps. from unknown sources, even if they look like a well known application.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]