Reverse Social Engineering Tech Support Scammers
Summary: Cisco Talos analysts posed as low-skilled users and called a fake tech support number, where a woman identifying herself as "Kelly Thompson" had them download TeamViewer via a TinyURL link, showed benign command-line output as evidence of a Trojan, and quoted $100 to remove it plus $50 to fix security drivers. Talos traced the operation to a New Delhi network of websites and VOIP numbers tied to Essential Services, whose registrant Sharad Goel and HR manager Farman Anees are linked to the macinscan.org site, and to a U.S. money handler, Sergio I. Cortes Jr.
Bottom line: Microsoft's David Finn is cited saying tech support scammers took nearly $1.5 billion from 3.3 million victims in a single year, and the infrastructure behind one such operation ran through a legitimate-looking recruitment company and a Delaware LLC collecting checks.
Read the original at Cisco Talos ↗
- Topics
- Phishing & Social Engineering
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