A week ago I reported on my personal blog how criminals were spamming out SMS messages that claimed to come from Apple, but were actually designed to steal personal information for the purposes of identity theft.
The messages all used a cunning piece of social engineering – posing as a notice from Apple that their Apple ID was due to expire that very day – to get unsuspecting users to click on a link to a phishing website.
The SMS messages were even more convincing because they referred to recipients by name, most likely fooling some into believing that there was a genuine reason to act upon the alert and visit the site pointed to by the criminals.
Although the site the criminals were initially using – appleexpired.co.uk – was quickly blocked by the major web browsers and taken down, that didn’t take the wind out of the criminals’s sails.
In the days since it has become clear that the identity thieves have registered a series of other domains – all claiming to be related to Apple or Apple ID.
Examples have included icloudauth.co.uk, mobileicloud.uk, and icloudmobile.co.uk.
Read more : SMS phishing attackers continue to pursue Apple users
The messages all used a cunning piece of social engineering – posing as a notice from Apple that their Apple ID was due to expire that very day – to get unsuspecting users to click on a link to a phishing website.
The SMS messages were even more convincing because they referred to recipients by name, most likely fooling some into believing that there was a genuine reason to act upon the alert and visit the site pointed to by the criminals.
Although the site the criminals were initially using – appleexpired.co.uk – was quickly blocked by the major web browsers and taken down, that didn’t take the wind out of the criminals’s sails.
In the days since it has become clear that the identity thieves have registered a series of other domains – all claiming to be related to Apple or Apple ID.
Examples have included icloudauth.co.uk, mobileicloud.uk, and icloudmobile.co.uk.
Read more : SMS phishing attackers continue to pursue Apple users
Last edited by a moderator:
