Telemarketing SPAM Used to Hype Stock

An interesting use of the traditionally trusted medium of the phone: leave “accidental” messages on answering machines and voicemail hyping a stock:

The messages were made to seem mistakenly left on answering machines, often made by a caller identifying herself as “Debbie” who wanted to pass along to a girlfriend a “hot” stock tip from a “hot stock exchange guy” she was dating, according to the authorities.

This attack allegedly happened in 2004, so I doubt VoIP was involved, but it would be an excellent attack medium for something like this. The trend here is the cheaper a communications medium becomes, the more it gets exploited, and the less people can trust it.
3 charged in voicemail stock scheme [An Jose Mercury News / AP]

Original post by Security Wonk and a wordpress plugin by Elliott

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