Courtesy of TechCrunch
A new voice phishing scam is going after iPhone users in a clever new way: by making calls seem like they are coming directly from Apple Support.
Brian Krebs reported today that a user, Jody Westby, got a call from Apple Support asking for her to call back. The contact information that came along with the number appeared to be Apple Inc.’s in the identity screen for the call. When she called the 866 number, however, something was clearly amiss.
KrebsOnSecurity called the number that the scam message asked Westby to contact (866-277-7794).
No doubt this is just another scheme to separate the unwary from their personal and financial details, and to extract some kind of payment (for supposed tech support services or some such). But it is remarkable that Apple’s own devices (or AT&T, which sold her the phone) can’t tell the difference between a call from Apple and someone trying to spoof Apple.
The exploit is unique because it allows callers to masquerade as other callers essentially by polluting search results with junk information that makes one number look like the contact number for a real company. The number Westby was told to call is a known phishing source. Remember: If anyone calls you claiming that your computer is broken they are most probably lying. After all, support people will never be proactive when it comes to problems with your computers, only reactive (if that).
This image is off my @AcIDc0r3 phone where I got a call this afternoon.
As you can see it looks identical as the one above. I don't know if folks in Europe are getting these as well but this particular message just hit me and all my relatives today as their all on my plan. As soon as I got mine I looked it up on the net and this article was the first that popped up on a Google search. I took my phone and showed my relatives and as I was showing them and asking them not to answer these calls, at that very moment (what are the chances) my father received one. I'm like W T F !! I also received the same call about a week ago and I thought that I had accidentally hung up on a Apple support rep but as of today I am fully aware that these are malicious calls. Anyways I though that this should be shared to spread awareness of these phony calls. If you get one of these, don't answer it, instead block the number because it's not Apple calling you, it's a scammer.
A new voice phishing scam is going after iPhone users in a clever new way: by making calls seem like they are coming directly from Apple Support.
Brian Krebs reported today that a user, Jody Westby, got a call from Apple Support asking for her to call back. The contact information that came along with the number appeared to be Apple Inc.’s in the identity screen for the call. When she called the 866 number, however, something was clearly amiss.
KrebsOnSecurity called the number that the scam message asked Westby to contact (866-277-7794).
No doubt this is just another scheme to separate the unwary from their personal and financial details, and to extract some kind of payment (for supposed tech support services or some such). But it is remarkable that Apple’s own devices (or AT&T, which sold her the phone) can’t tell the difference between a call from Apple and someone trying to spoof Apple.
The exploit is unique because it allows callers to masquerade as other callers essentially by polluting search results with junk information that makes one number look like the contact number for a real company. The number Westby was told to call is a known phishing source. Remember: If anyone calls you claiming that your computer is broken they are most probably lying. After all, support people will never be proactive when it comes to problems with your computers, only reactive (if that).
This image is off my @AcIDc0r3 phone where I got a call this afternoon.
As you can see it looks identical as the one above. I don't know if folks in Europe are getting these as well but this particular message just hit me and all my relatives today as their all on my plan. As soon as I got mine I looked it up on the net and this article was the first that popped up on a Google search. I took my phone and showed my relatives and as I was showing them and asking them not to answer these calls, at that very moment (what are the chances) my father received one. I'm like W T F !! I also received the same call about a week ago and I thought that I had accidentally hung up on a Apple support rep but as of today I am fully aware that these are malicious calls. Anyways I though that this should be shared to spread awareness of these phony calls. If you get one of these, don't answer it, instead block the number because it's not Apple calling you, it's a scammer.
