Google Sues to Disrupt Chinese SMS Phishing Triad
Summary: Google filed suit in the Southern District of New York on November 12 against 25 unnamed 'John Doe' defendants tied to Lighthouse, a China-based phishing kit that helps scammers impersonate brands and turn stolen card data into Apple and Google mobile wallets. Google says Lighthouse has harmed more than a million victims across 120 countries, offers over 600 phishing site templates covering more than 400 entities, and that Google logos appeared on at least a quarter of them.
Why it matters: A May 2025 Silent Push report cited here found roughly 25,000 phishing domains active in any 8-day period, most hosted at Tencent and Alibaba - so the lawsuit's real leverage is a default judgment Google could carry to those hosts, not the 25 defendants themselves.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Phishing & Social Engineering
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