Di does not make these dangerous connections.
Republished on June 27 with new advice and defenses for smartphones users.
Apparently prudence for smartphones users this week, with the police criminals of the police can push Malicious texts Directly on their phones, bypassing mobile networks. This is why Google warns all smartphones users to modify their network settings.
The threat comes from so-called SMS blasters, which intimidates phones by establishing a direct connection with the radio system of an attacker, thinking that it is a real access point to the network.
The texts themselves are not different from those who come via normal networks – but for an attacker, it is not necessary to have a list of target numbers, they can select a target location instead. This means that they can prioritize areas with richer choices.
Police in the United Kingdom, when a cyber criminal was the subject of SMS this week, warn that criminals will try “to bypass fraud prevention measures designed to protect consumers (to)
Fly with personal and financial information, it is therefore important that customers are alert to potential fraud threats, especially SMS. »»
Google warns that “this method to inject messages fully bypass the network of operators, thus bypassing all anti-spam and anti-fraud filters based on a sophisticated network”. The company has now seen this “SMS blaster fraud” in several countries.
Google also says that the increase in evidence “from the exploitation of the weaknesses of cellular communication standards taking advantage of the simulators of cellular sites” means that users must act.
The solution is to deactivate 2G networks on your phone. It still depends on the manufacturer and the model, but you can search for 2G or telephone or cellular parameters to check if it is available. The 2G is terribly unclean compared to more recent networks, in particular 5G but also 4G (LTE) and even 3G.
That’s why Google and Samsung are upgrade devices to prevent Android phones from connecting to these less secure networks. 2G is also deactivated by default if the new Android 16 Advanced protection mode is activated. The police council is to deactivate 2G.
Disable 2G on your phone
Remember that even in the places where 2G has been lying, the phone will always connect to a false cell access point if it has activated 2G. This is a device level problem.
As a rarity, it is a security zone where androids beat iphones. You cannot currently deactivate 2G on an Apple device, unless you use Apple locking mode. But you can filter the texts from unknown numbers and treat them all with suspicion. And the advice not to click on the links is the same, but an SMS was sent to your phone.
And on this note, while SMS blasters can be a risk for users sufficiently unlucky to find themselves near one, the real dangers remain based on the network. According to Micro trend The last report, the main threat last month was “cybercriminals using their regular tactics by trying to defraud consumers, with crooks imitating well -known brands such as Paypal, Netflix, Mater Loteries, Toyota and Google”.
The security society says: “The golden rule of any scam, online or other, is that if something seems too good to be true, this is probably the case.” And this is true, but an SMS is sent to your phone, and whatever the lure used to encourage you to engage.
Trend Micro advises users to monitor these signs of danger:
- “Unexpected contact. Think about how an organization generally contacts you. If it is not via an SMS, contact them directly to check if it is legitimate. Remember that authentic organizations do not contact you unexpectedly, asking you to disclose personal or financial details via an SMS.
- Spelling and grammatical errors. If a message does not seem professional, it is a red flag that it is probably a scam. Legitimate organizations rarely make flagrant spelling or grammatical errors in customer communications.
- Is the message relevant to you? For example, if that informs you of a package delivery, have you ordered or expected something? If that informs you of a prize, have you participated in a competition? If it is a gift card, is it somewhere that you have already bought?
For Google pixel users at least, There are now good news While the fight against switches by phone continues. At least with regard to calls. But the Android manufacturer also uses similar technology to report scams, and highlighted the growing threat.
As seen for the first time by Android authority“Google seems to plan to integrate the detection of the scam and the call screen features in the Pixel device configuration process.
This is important because if Google must be greeted for these new security features, everything is nothing if they are not on by default or easily. And it seems to be the corrective. “This change could thus increase the adoption of users of these crucial security features.”
As Google Explain, detection of the scam on Pixel phones “is deactivated by default. The user must actively opt to activate the function.
This is one of the new security features by taking advantage of the processing on the arrangements on devices, ensuring that user data is not shared without discernment with the processing of the cloud, which is important given the sensitive nature of the data contained in the calls and private messages.
“Data processing for scam detecting is done on disk,” explains Google. “Audio or conversation transcription is not stored on the device, sent to Google servers or elsewhere.” Compare this to confidentiality problems to do the same for Gmail.
Whether calls or SMS, the complete extent of the defenses against these scams must be lit by default and should force users to actively deactivate the functionality if they wish to turn them off. This is the extent of this threat, drastic measures are now necessary. Without doubt, 2G must also be deactivated by default, as is the case with the advanced Android protection mode.
As Checkpoint Warnings, the magnitude of these new SMS scams is “among the most widespread SMISHING attacks in the United States in recent memory. The coordinated identity of government agencies via brand phishing sites and mass distributed SMS (A) leads to a multi-state impact. ”
