The SMS phishing attack sent group messages to T-Mobile customers
According to the New Jersey Cybersecurity & Communication Integration Cell (NJCCIC), there’s a bad actor (or several) who’s been sending fake T-Mobile text messages to users thanking them for their recent payments and offering them a gift. That message will have a link included that will take the user to a website. The NJCCIC didn’t state what people found on the website, but you can bet that it’s bad news. The fact that you can’t block these messages makes things worse. The messages reach users via group messages, and that makes them impossible to block. Adding insult to injury, some people report getting dozens of those bogus messages over the course of a few days.
Why this is happening
As stated before, big companies are big targets for hackers. Companies like Linkedin, Facebook, NVIDIA, Twitch, and T-Mobile have had hundreds of gigabytes (maybe even terabytes) of data stolen in total, and that’s just a few examples over the course of about a year. This latest phishing attack could be the result of the recent data leak that impacted T-Mobile last year. The data from 54 million users was stolen from the company. T-Mobile did buy back the data by paying the hacker $200,000 in cryptocurrency. It bought it back under the condition that the hacker (named Subvirt) delete the data after the transaction. However, since hackers aren’t exactly boy scouts, Subvirt didn’t delete the data. It’s possible that the hacker continued to peddle the data to other takers, and someone else bought it. T-Mobile is most likely looking into this issue and should, hopefully, administer a solution. In the meantime, if you received any of these messages, then you shouldn’t open any of those links. If you’ve just paid your bill, go to the official T-Mobile site or your T-Mobile app to review your order.
