Anti-Semite hacker tried to spam UAE mobile clients

Dec 4, 2015 02:45 GMT  ·  By

Information lost in the 2013 SMSGlobal data breach was used by an unknown hacker in April 2015 when he tried to send four million anti-Semite messages to mobile users in the United Arab Emirates (SMS), The Guardian reports.

SMSGlobal, an Australian company that provides messaging services for companies around the globe, reported a hacking incident in 2013 when an unknown assailant managed to penetrate its servers and steal an unknown quantity of data.

While nothing happened for two years, in April 2015, using technical details about customer accounts, an anonymous hacker accessed SMSGlobal's servers and configured the system to send out over 4 million SMS messages, mainly to users living in UAE, using DU, a local mobile carrier and SMSGlobal's UAE partner.

The SMS texts said the following: "Our motto forever Death to America, Death to the Jews."

Only 5,000 messages out of the 4 million were actually sent

Because the messages were spoofed to come from DU customers and were sent to other DU clients, the company quickly caught on to the issue, and together with SMSGlobal stopped the campaign after only around 5,000 texts were sent out.

The incident repeated in September 2015, when the hacker also tried to send out: "Mismanagement by Saudi officials was the reason for the death of the hajjaj in Mina." The hacker was referring to the death of 2,000 Hajj pilgrims in a stampede near Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

SMSGlobal says the hacker that perpetrated the 2013 attack only got its hands on account access credentials, which he used to gain access to their API, to carry out his attacks.

The company also said that after the 2013 data breach it started migrating most of its clients to a new platform and that the recent incident was the result of the hacker using older accounts to access their systems.