Ever received texts offering loans or any kind of financial offers? Well, next time before you get tempted to click that link, DO NOT ! Phishing has been seem to target people via text messages, particularly under a renowned financial institution’s name.
The messages are typically embedded with the URLs for victims to click. These URLs claim to have important notices concerning the target, but basically leads to a link that compromises the target’s device and personal information.
According to security experts at PhishLabs, these phishing attacks have been abusing the sensors to launch evasion on the subject’s smartphone device.
Here’s how:
The attack abuses device motion and orientation events. More specifically, the phishing attack takes control over the gyroscope and accelerometers of smartphones. “By checking for the presence and state of these controls, a site can determine whether it is on a mobile device and behave differently in response,” PhishLabs said in its report.
Error 404
Once the URL in the text message is clicked on, the visitor is redirected to a web page resulting in a “404 error” from the server. This signifies multiple layers of protection from detection that the hackers have in place.
