The United Parcel Service (UPS) says fraudsters have been harvesting telephone numbers and different data from its on-line cargo monitoring instrument in Canada to ship extremely focused SMS phishing (a.ok.a. “smishing”) messages that spoofed UPS and different high manufacturers. The missives addressed recipients by identify, included particulars about current orders, and warned that these orders wouldn’t be shipped except the client paid an added supply charge.
In a snail mail letter despatched this month to Canadian prospects, UPS Canada Ltd. stated it’s conscious that some package deal recipients have acquired fraudulent textual content messages demanding cost earlier than a package deal may be delivered, and that it has been working with companions in its supply chain to attempt to perceive how the fraud was occurring.
The current letter from UPS about SMS phishers harvesting cargo particulars and telephone numbers from its web site.
“Throughout that evaluation, UPS found a way by which an individual who looked for a selected package deal or misused a package deal look-up instrument might acquire extra details about the supply, probably together with a recipient’s telephone quantity,” the letter reads. “As a result of this data could possibly be misused by third events, together with probably in a smishing scheme, UPS has taken steps to restrict entry to that data.”
The written discover goes on to say UPS believes the info publicity “affected packages for a small group of shippers and a few of their prospects from February 1, 2022 to April 24, 2023.”
As early as April 2022, KrebsOnSecurity started receiving ideas from Canadian readers who had been puzzling over why they’d simply acquired certainly one of these SMS phishing messages that referenced data from a current order they’d legitimately positioned at a web-based retailer.
In March, 2023, a reader named Dylan from British Columbia wrote in to say he’d acquired certainly one of these transport charge rip-off messages not lengthy after inserting an order to purchase gobs of constructing blocks straight from Lego.com. The message included his full identify, telephone quantity, and postal code, and urged him to click on a hyperlink to mydeliveryfee-ups[.]data and pay a $1.55 supply charge that was supposedly required to ship his Legos.
“From looking out the textual content of this phishing message, I can see that lots of people have skilled this rip-off, which is extra convincing due to the knowledge the phishing textual content comprises,” Dylan wrote. “It appears more likely to me that UPS is leaking data one way or the other about upcoming deliveries.”
Josh is a reader who works for an organization that ships merchandise to Canada, and in early January 2023 he inquired whether or not there was any details about a breach at UPS Canada.
“We’ve seen a lot of our prospects focused with a fraudulent UPS textual content message scheme after inserting an order,” Josh stated. “A hyperlink is supplied (usually solely after the client responds to the textual content) which takes you to a captcha web page, adopted by a fraudulent cost assortment web page.”
Pivoting on the area within the smishing message despatched to Dylan reveals the phishing area shared an Web host in Russia [91.215.85-166] with almost two dozen different smishing associated domains, together with upsdelivery[.]data, legodelivery[.]data, adidascanadaltd[.]com, crocscanadafee[.]data, refw0234apple[.]data, vista-printcanada[.]data and telus-ca[.]data.
The inclusion of big-name manufacturers within the domains of those UPS smishing campaigns suggests the perpetrators had the power to focus their lookups on UPS prospects who had just lately ordered gadgets from particular corporations.
Makes an attempt to go to these domains with an internet browser failed, however loading them in a cellular system (or in my case, emulating a cellular system utilizing a digital machine and Developer Instruments in Firefox) revealed the primary stage of this smishing assault. As Josh talked about, what first popped up was a CAPTCHA; after the customer solved the CAPTCHA, they had been taken by a number of extra pages that requested the consumer’s full identify, date of delivery, bank card quantity, tackle, electronic mail and telephone quantity.
A smishing web site focusing on Canadians who just lately bought from Adidas on-line. The location would solely load in a cellular browser.
In April 2022, KrebsOnSecurity heard from Alex, the CEO of a know-how firm in Canada who requested to go away his final identify out of this story. Alex reached out when he started receiving the smishing messages nearly instantly after ordering two units of Airpods straight from Apple’s web site.
What puzzled Alex most was that he’d instructed Apple to ship the Airpods as a present to 2 completely different individuals, and fewer than 24 hours later the telephone quantity he makes use of for his Apple account acquired two of the phishing messages, each of which contained salutations that included the names of the individuals for whom he’d purchased Airpods.
“I’d put the recipient as completely different individuals on my group, however as a result of it was my telephone quantity on each orders I used to be the one getting the texts,” Alex defined. “That very same day, I bought textual content messages referring to me as two completely different individuals, neither of whom had been me.”
Alex stated he believes UPS Canada both doesn’t absolutely perceive what occurred but, or it’s being coy about what it is aware of. He stated the wording of UPS’s response misleadingly suggests the smishing assaults had been one way or the other the results of hackers randomly wanting up package deal data through the corporate’s monitoring web site.
Alex stated it’s doubtless that whoever is accountable discovered tips on how to question the UPS Canada web site for less than pending orders from particular manufacturers, maybe by exploiting some kind of software programming interface (API) that UPS Canada makes or made accessible to its greatest retail companions.
“It wasn’t like I put the order by [on Apple.ca] and a few days or even weeks later I bought a focused smishing assault,” he stated. “It was kind of the identical day. And it was as if [the phishers] had been being notified the order existed.”
The letter to UPS Canada prospects doesn’t point out whether or not every other prospects in North America had been affected, and it stays unclear whether or not any UPS prospects exterior of Canada might have been focused.
In an announcement supplied to KrebsOnSecurity, Sandy Springs, Ga. based mostly UPS [NYSE:UPS] stated the corporate has been working with companions within the supply chain to know how that fraud was being perpetrated, in addition to with regulation enforcement and third-party consultants to establish the reason for this scheme and to place a cease to it.
“Legislation enforcement has indicated that there was a rise in smishing impacting a lot of shippers and many various industries,” reads an electronic mail from Brian Hughes, director of monetary and technique communications at UPS.
“Out of an abundance of warning, UPS is sending privateness incident notification letters to people in Canada whose data might have been impacted,” Hughes stated. “We encourage our prospects and basic customers to be taught concerning the methods they’ll keep protected towards makes an attempt like this by visiting the UPS Battle Fraud web site.”
