14 DAY TRIAL // Authorities in China have detained a total of 1,530 individuals suspected of being involved in mobile spamming operations. The action against SMS spammers started in February.
As part of the crackdown on spammers, 3,540 cases have been identified. Authorities have seized 2,600 devices used for spam distribution and they’ve shut down 24 websites that offer such equipment, said the country’s Ministry of Public Security cited by ECNS.
Government and Communist Party of China departments have been involved in the operation which targets those who manufacture, sell and use unlicensed telecommunications stations. Chinese authorities say these criminal groups are involved in fraud and other schemes.
One group of crooks identified by police in the Liaoning province is said to be responsible for sending more than 200 million spam messages. In the first half of 2013, in China, around 200 billion unwanted text messages were sent out by spammers.
The mobile cybercriminal underground market is flourishing in China. Earlier this month, Trend Micro published a report detailing the products offered on various websites.
The list includes premium mobile service abusers, SMS spamming services and devices, SMS forwarders, phone number scanning services, and services that can be used to boost the ranking of applications.
According to Trend Micro’s study, SMS spam is utilized to advertise various products and services, but many of the messages are designed to lure people to phishing websites.
In order to send out a large number of spam messages, cybercriminals rely on various devices like GSM modems, Internet short message gateways and SMS servers.
GMS modems can be fitted with multiple SIM cards, allowing the spammers to send a large number of messages at once. For instance, a 16-slot GSM modem can send 9,600 text messages in just one hour.
Those who want to send out SMS spam at even faster rates can use the Internet short message gateway, a device given by mobile network carriers to service providers. It’s specially designed to send out a large number of text messages simultaneously, so it’s often abused by spammers.
SMS servers are also efficient. The devices send a high-power signal, which forces all mobile phones from its radius to disconnect from legitimate base stations and connect to the SMS server. The server can push out spam to the mobile devices, after which it disconnects and allows them to reconnect to the legitimate station.
SMS servers are also known as fake base stations. A complete kit costs around $7,400 (€5,400).