Wrong number texts — a brilliant yet simple attack vector

In the world of information security, there are many cutting-edge attacks. Like the one out of Israel, researchers from Ben-Gurion University and the Weizmann Institute created a technique for long-distance eavesdropping they call lamphone.

The lamphone attack allows anyone with a laptop, telescope, and a $400 electro-optical sensor, to listen in on any sounds in a room that’s hundreds of feet away in real-time by merely observing the minuscule vibrations those sounds create on the glass surface of a light bulb inside.

By measuring the tiny changes in light output from the bulb that those vibrations cause, the researchers showed that a spy could pick up sound clearly enough to discern the contents of conversations or even recognize a piece of music. This is straight out of Tom Clancy.

On the opposite end are the low-tech attacks such as iTunes gift card scams and wrong number texts. Max Read has a detailed analysis of those weird wrong-number texts. Rather than being a random wrong number, they are part of sophisticated international scam networks.

These start as a innocuous text message, often with romantic overtones. The scammer aims to get you to invest in their cryptocurrency platform. They get you to invest in their platforms and will provide you with a front-end to…