Since January 2022, banks and markets in Russia have seen a three-fold increase in the frequency of SMS attacks. At the time of the discovery, the companies’ losses can already amount to millions of rubles, Vedomosti reported with reference to Servicepipe.
Scammers use malicious bots that attack commercial websites and apps. Using the phone numbers from the leaked databases, the bots generate many registration, authorization or password recovery requests per number.
On average, in one attack, the attackers can send tens of thousands of SMS. In this case, the attacks can be repeated several times a day. Sending such a message costs an average of 1.5-2 rubles. For banks in the top 10, the cost varies from 1.6 rubles to 2.1 rubles.
The growth in the number of sms attacks in 2022 was influenced by the fact that last year a record number of Russian databases gained open access, experts say. Then 1.5 billion records with Russian personal data entered the network.
According to analysts, simple SMS attacks are filtered through Captcha, a limit on the number of messages sent, and restrictions on IP addresses and countries. However, as the number base used, the number of IP addresses and the complexity of bots increase, these methods no longer help, they must be replaced with specialized anti-bot solutions.
Author:
karina pardaeva
Source: RB
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
