14 DAY TRIAL // Security experts have come across a new mobile number harvesting service that allows users to fully customize the type of information they want to collect. The collected information can then be utilized to drive SMS spam campaigns that rely on specialized services.
Identified by Webroot’s Dancho Danchev in the underground market, the mobile number harvesting service can be used to collect information based on region, types of companies, age, interests, work position, gender and other options.
According to the service’s operators, it takes up to 12 hours to harvest between 1,000 and 35,000 phone numbers, and it takes between 72 and 86 hours if the customer wants over 50,000 numbers based on certain criteria.
The individuals that advertise the service accept payment via WebMoney, which shows that experts might have been right when they said that cybercriminals might slowly migrate back to WebMoney now that Liberty Reserve was out of the picture.
“We expect to continue observing an increase in vendors offering cybercrime-as-a-service solutions with vertical market integration in mind, in an attempt by the cybercriminals operating them to occupy an even bigger market share within the TDoS and the SMS spam market segments,” Danchev explained.