Researchers Find 25,000 Domains Used In Tech Support Scams (onthewire.io)

An anonymous reader writes: Three doctoral students at Stony Brook University spent eight months analyzing internet scammers who pose as remote tech support workers (usually pretending to be from Microsoft of Apple). Their research revealed more than 25,000 scam domains and thousands of different scam phone numbers. "Although victims of these scams can be anywhere, the researchers found that 85.4% of the IP addresses in these scams were located across different regions of India," reports On The Wire, "with 9.7% located in the United States and 4.9% in Costa Rica. Scammers typically asked users for an average of $291, with prices ranging from $70 to $1,000."

The researchers even called 60 of the con artists to study their technique, and concluded most were working in large, organized call centers. They use remote access tools, and in fact two popular tools were used in 81% of the scams, according to the paper. "We found that, on average, a scammer takes 17 minutes, using multiple social engineering techniques mostly based on misrepresenting OS messages, to convince users of their infections..."

Comments

chief enablers

[v1]

two popular tools were used in 81% of the scams

My bet: TeamViewer and LogMeIn.

most were working in large, organized call centers.

This is part of why I don't understand why this continues to be a big problem. They're not some fly-by-night flighty twitchy boiler room working in a different hotel room every week to try to keep one step ahead of a door kick. These are established, stable, organized, stationary, predictable groups that ought to be easy targets for law enforcement. Seeing as this also coincides with only a few geographical locations (india and costa rica) I can only presume local law enforcement is either very lax, is complacent ("hey it brings money into our local economy, that's good right?"), or is on the take.