Fuel pass scam targets mobile phones

A sophisticated phishing run is targeting Greek mobile users with fraudulent text messages falsely promising substance subsidies, investigators person found.

The scam messages tell recipients they are entitled to fiscal assistance done a fictitious “Fuel Pass III” program, urging them to click a nexus and participate idiosyncratic and banking details. The messages are well-written and grammatically correct, exploiting a existent authorities programme to look credible.

Andreas Venieris, an accusation systems information officer, traced the cognition to a Frankfurt server belonging to Tencent, the Chinese unreality computing service, with 50 near-identical fake authorities domains registered astatine the aforesaid address.

“The attacker is not successful Germany – they simply rented a server there,” Venieris said. “The use of the Chinese work suggests a imaginable transportation with China oregon Southeast Asia, but adjacent that is not certain.

“The redundancy is deliberate,” helium added. “If 1 domain gets blocked, the remaining 49 proceed operating.”

Victims who click the nexus are walked done a convincing replica of Greece’s authoritative benefits portal, yet surrendering slope paper details. When their slope sends a one-time password, the fake ιστοσελίδα captures it — completing the theft.

Venieris described the strategy arsenic “a implicit Phishing-as-a-Service kit” that tin besides impersonate courier companies, banks, and online retailers, suggesting an organized radical selling transgression infrastructure to different atrocious actors.

Public authorities, officials stressed, ne'er petition slope details by text message.