Smart Communications has cited a report from the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) suggesting that the personalized spam text messages proliferating recently could be the handiwork of scammers who mined subscriber data from GCash and Viber.
PLDT-owned mobile operator Smart Communications said it has blocked Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) or clickable links usually found in spam text messages.
The BSP said it recently completed the Advanced SupTech Engine for Risk-Based Compliance (ASTERisC*), which will soon be deployed among selected BSP Supervised Financial Institutions (BSFIs).
PLDT and its wireless unit Smart Communications have urged Internet users to be wary of websites they visit, especially those that require login credentials.
Scammers often use e-wallet accounts that are not registered under their names. Fraudsters are able to do this by using or buying SIM cards in the black market that are registered with e-wallets under people who sell or lend their identities.
Philippine companies paid $1.6 billion on average through the nose for ransomware attacks in 2022, making the country the third most-extorted by ransomware in the world next only to Japan and the Netherlands, according to cybersecurity firm Sophos.
Microsoft explained that the RaaS economy provides even malicious users with little technical expertise access to ransomware payloads, data leakage, and payment infrastructure. Cybercriminals can buy and use multiple RaaS programs such as Conti or REvil, and switch between them as needed. This market for ransomware services has created an entire industry with its own middlemen, including brokers and other specialized roles.
E-security firm Checkmarx has called for the software industry to secure its supply chains saying that developers don’t always have time to closely scrutinize the inner workings of open source code packages.
