Most people are familiar with phishing – fraudulent emails meant to scam recipients – but threat actors don’t limit themselves to email. Smishing, the use of SMS and text messages to send fake messages, has become prevalent in the last several years. Smishers may target employees in an attempt to collect login or proprietary information, or they may target your customers by impersonating your company. Smishing may not be able to be prevented, but detecting smishing through stronger stealer log monitoring can greatly benefit companies.
How Does Flare Support Smishing Detection?
By scanning the clear and dark web, Flare’s solution empowers security teams to monitor for stealer logs. Stealer logs often contain phone numbers, and if a person’s personal or work phone number shows up in a stealer log with corporate credentials, this is useful information for a security team to identify users who are more likely to be targeted with a SMS phish and perhaps expose them to additional training.
Most people are familiar with phishing — fraudulent emails meant to scam recipients — but criminals don’t limit themselves to email. Smishing, the use of SMS and text messages to send fake messages, has become prevalent in the last several years. Smishers may target employees in an attempt to collect login or proprietary information, or they may target your customers by impersonating your company.
What are the key benefits of using Flare to help with smishing detection?
- Automated scanning: Monitor hundreds of dark web marketplaces, illicit Telegram channels, and other sources to identify threat actors that are targeting or using your organization as part of a smishing attack.
- Relevant notifications: Prioritized alerts for detected malicious activity so that security teams can proactively remediate issues and reduce organizational risk.
- Threat Intelligence: Automated information collection and analysis that provides context for events and translates posts written in foreign languages to empower analysts of all experience levels. This also helps organizations stay informed about the latest tactics and potential threats.
Smishing Prevention: An Overview
What is smishing?
The term “smishing” is a combination of the words “SMS” and “phishing” — an unsurprising name, considering that smishing is a type of phishing attack that uses SMS (Short Message Service) or text messages rather than email. Like phishing attacks, smishing messages are social engineering attacks, intended to manipulate recipients into providing personal information or clicking on malicious links. They often appear to come from legitimate sources, such as banks, service providers, or even friends. Many include an urgent call to action, so that victims will act quickly, before they’ve had a chance to think about the legitimacy of the message.
Can smishing be prevented?
While smishing campaigns themselves can’t necessarily be prevented, by taking proactive measures businesses can significantly reduce the risk and impact of such attacks. For example, businesses can monitor hacker forums and Telegram channels, so they know if their information is likely to be used for an attack. They can also monitor their assets so that as soon as customer or employee phone numbers are shared by criminals, action can be taken to head off a smishing attack. Businesses can also use filters to detect unknown senders at least on iPhones, or simply ignore and delete messages from unknown senders.
What’s the goal of a smishing attack?
As with most bad actors, smishers are looking for a quick payday by sending out fraudulent texts. Their goal is to trick your employees or your customers into offering up sensitive information, such as:
- Usernames
- Passwords
- Financial details
- Personally identifiable information (PII), like a birth date or email address
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This is often accomplished by incorporating personal information into the smishing attack, so that the victim believes it’s a legitimate text message from a trusted source.
Why Smishing Detection is Especially Relevant Now
Why is detecting smishing critical in today’s cybersecurity landscape?
In the wake of the pandemic, more people than ever rely on their phones and text messages to connect with employers, customers, and businesses. It’s not unusual for businesses to use SMS campaigns to advertise to their customers, nor is it unusual for a manager to text remote workers. Smishers are only too happy to take advantage of these mobile connections. The advent of generative AI (GenAI) is also contributing to the prevalence of smishing; by using GenAI, criminals can easily craft more convincing SMS messages, making it more likely that victims will fall for a scam.
Why is smishing prevention/detection important to your business?
Smishing attacks can lead to various forms of fraud, including identity theft, financial theft, and the installation of malware on the recipient’s device. It can also lead to customer distrust if a criminal is using your brand as part of a phishing campaign, and that reputational loss can cause a company financial loss in the long term. When a smishing campaign targets employees, criminals may be able to steal credentials that give them access to your networks and systems, which may result in a data breach or ransomware attack.
What are some smishing prevention/detection strategies?
- SMS filtering/mobile device security: SMS filters can analyze incoming text messages for known indicators of smishing, such as suspicious URLs, keywords, and sender information. This helps in blocking malicious messages before they reach the user.
- Machine learning algorithms: Machine learning can detect patterns and anomalies in SMS traffic that may indicate smishing attempts. These algorithms can continuously learn and adapt to new tactics used by attackers.
- User awareness and training: Training can help users recognize and avoid smishing attempts. By increasing user awareness, the likelihood of falling victim to such attacks is reduced.
- Proactive monitoring: Mapping and monitoring your business’s assets can help prevent smishing by letting your team know when your organization is being targeted by smishers.
Smishing Prevention/Detection and Flare
Flare provides the leading Threat Exposure Management (TEM) solution for organizations. Our technology constantly scans the online world, including the clear & dark web, to discover unknown events, automatically prioritize risks, and deliver actionable intelligence you can use instantly to improve security. Flare’s platform scans online forums, including illicit Telegram channels with stealer logs, to identify stealer logs containing phone numbers and corporate credentials that could be used as part of a smishing attack.
Our solution integrates into your security program in 30 minutes to provide your team with actionable intelligence and automated remediation for high-risk exposure. See it yourself with our free trial.
