It all began during the holiday season, when the wife of Grant Smith, 23 years old and a cybersecurity expert, received a text message claiming to come from the United States Postal Service. The message is clear: she must update her contact details if she wishes to receive her packageexplain People.
The couple, accustomed to a certain digital security thanks to Grant's work, did not expect to fall into any trap. Unfortunately, the confusion and rush of the holiday season didn't help. The expert's wife clicks on the link in the message and fills in the fields. And before saying phew, the couple realizes thathe has just been the victim of a scam well known.
He decided not to let it happen
If Grant's wife quickly realizes that she has just been trapped, it is unfortunately too late. The scammers now have his personal information. Faced with the situation,
the cybersecurity expert decided to take matters into his own hands and didn't hesitate for a second to use his skills.
Above all, the first step was to identify the source from which the message received by his wife came. In just a few weeks, Grant managed identify and hack a system in Chinese which the scammers used to cheat on his wife.
390,000 credit cards hacked
By accessing the scammers' database, Grant then realizes one thing: the database contains information for 390,000 credit cards. That’s as many people scammed.
What to do when faced with such a discovery? “I thought about contacting the victims directly, but that would be a bit weird if an unknown person said that your credit card data was stolen“, explained the young man. He decided to contact the United States Postal Investigation Service and a bank whose name he did not disclose.
Scammers who target absolutely everyone
During his investigation, one very specific thing stood out to Grant: the scale of the network of scammers. While giving a presentation at the 2023 DEF CON hacker convention, he wanted to dig into the subject and asked his audience who had ever received a text message like the one his wife received. To his surprise, everyone in attendance raised their hands.
He then realized that the scammers are not targeting anyone in particular, but have a large-scale strategy. They send thousands of text messages every day to random numbers in the hope that a small portion of the targets will take the bait. “It's a mass campaign“, explained Grant, “and a certain proportion of people end up clicking on the malicious link.“
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