During the summer of 2020, as the world came to terms with pandemic life, customer care staff at Swisscom were alerted to unfamiliar and suspicious messaging activity on their network. Like operators everywhere, Swisscom were on guard against fraudsters using the cover of the Covid-19 emergency to target vulnerable subscribers. Swisscom proactively engaged Openmind networks to conduct an audit on their network to discover the extent of the problem.
Openmind reaffirmed that Swisscom subscribers were indeed being targeted by fraudsters with ‘Smishing’ messages. These Smishing messages were spoofed to look like a parcel delivery notifications, but containing a URL that if clicked could download malware to an Android phone. If clicked on an iPhone, the same URL would throw up a faked iTunes login page designed to capture usernames and passwords from Apple users. Indeed Apple users were the primary target of this attack. T he intent of the fraudsters was to get access to the iTunes store to buy N etflix vouchers that could be sold online.
Instances of similar attacks were reported by operators across Europe. Not unlike Covid-19, Smishing hit in wave after wave, moving from one operator to another. O ne particular Smishing fraud hit primetime – ‘Flubot’ – a cunning banking Trojan hosted on a botnet of infected handsets, capable of emptying the bank accounts of unwary subscribers. Faced with these attacks, and knowing that a solution was available from O penmind Networks, Swisscom determined to take immediate action to protect their subscribers.
Openmind had created a services team dedicated to uncovering and blocking fraudulent messaging traffic. W orking together with Swisscom’s Fraud Team, they designed a service that could detect incoming Smishing messages and block them before they were delivered to subscribers.
Crucially, this also had to be done while adhering to strict subscriber privacy regulations in Switzerland. Even though technology was used to identify Smishing frauds, this technology could only be applied to messages that were first stripped of any details that could uniquely identify the targeted subscriber.
This was achieved using Message-anonymization software delivered by Openmind and was essential to securing approval by Swisscom’s Data Protection Officer for implementation of the new service.
Openmind’s Smishing Detection service is built on the Smart Control Platform. The Smart Control consists of a central Machine Learning engine coupled with different analytical tools that support the real-time, pro-active detection and blocking of different types of messaging fraud.
Once activated, the Smishing Detection Solution immediately proved its worth, preventing fraudulent messages from being delivered to Swisscom Subscribers. ThomaMartinson, Product Manager of Communications Services is enthusiastic about the success of the new service.
