SINGAPORE – All authorities businesses will register with a brand new anti-SMS spoofing registry to guard the names they use to ship textual content messages to the general public, within the wake of a spate of SMS phishing scams focusing on OCBC Financial institution clients.
“This may make it tougher for attackers to ship spoofed messages disguised as authorities businesses, and facilitate tracing efforts by the Ministry of House Affairs to catch scammers,” mentioned the Good Nation Digital Authorities Group on Friday (Jan 21).
The group added that it’ll additionally discover utilizing different channels, such because the inbox characteristic within the Singpass app, for the Authorities to ship messages to the general public.
The transfer comes after the Infocomm Media Improvement Authority on Monday urged extra companies to enroll in the Singapore SMS SenderID Safety Registry, which permits organisations to register SMS sender names they want to shield.
Unauthorised events that attempt to ship SMS messages utilizing the registered names can be blocked on cell operators’ networks.
Arrange collectively by IMDA and the Financial Authority of Singapore, the registry launched as a pilot scheme in August final 12 months and presently has six organisations registered with it.
Final month, almost 470 OCBC clients misplaced at the very least $8.5 million in SMS phishing scams.
The fraudsters had spoofed the OCBC title to ship pretend SMSes with hyperlinks to bogus financial institution web sites that attempted to phish for purchasers’ financial institution credentials.
