In recent weeks we have seen a worrying increase in the use of a computer attack technique known as “smishing”. This technique is based on deceiving the user by sending fraudulent SMS to their mobile with the intention that they access an impersonated website from which to collect data. We have already seen this type of scam using banks, the Treasury or Social Security as a hook. But now hackers are turning to a new platform to pull off this scam: Netflix.
A few hours ago, the Internet Security Office, OSI, reported a new smishing scam taking place in Spain. In this new scam, hackers send an SMS to their victims stating that There was a problem with Netflix payment and that they must renew the payment data if they want to continue using the platform.
Some of the most striking features of these text messages to steal our Netflix data are:
- They usually start with the word “NETFLIX” to give credibility and increase the probability that users will read it.
- The URL always carries HTTPS, and often has easily confused marks, such as “netfspain” or “neftxes”.
- The body of the message contains texts such as “payment refused”, “confirm payment”, “update information”, etc.
- It is still common to see messages written with misspellings, or with strange grammar.
- They call the emergency room, giving us 24 hours to solve the problem.
This attack has two objectives. On the one hand, it seeks to get hold of the victim’s Netflix access data, and on the other, to get hold of the victim’s bank details. To do this, together with the SMS, it sends a link, which users must open and which leads to a false website, but which perfectly imitates the appearance of Netflix.
Every piece of information we enter into the text boxes that appear on these websites is automatically sent to hackers and stored in a database. Therefore, we must be very careful if we do not want to end up having problems.
To solve the problems
Of course, it’s all part of a scam. Netflix will not send us an SMS if we do not renew our subscription or if there is a problem with the payment. In any case, it will send us an email, as it usually does, indicating the problem, and it will show us a warning when we enter the web. But a text message, and on top of it poorly written, no.
If for whatever reason we have fallen for the scam, and we have entered our data on the web that appears to us, we must follow the following steps:
- Check if we can continue to access Netflix. If yes, manually disable automatic payment, check the associated email, and change the password.
- Change the password of all the sites where we use the same, since hackers will use it to try to enter other websites (Facebook, Gmail, etc).
- If we have entered bank details, contact the bank as soon as possible to take action. Generally, with a change of card everything should be solved.
