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The equipment that allowed fraudsters to make 20 million calls a day was seized by employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs from the beginning of 2023, a representative of the department said at a hearing in the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation. These are four hundred SIM-banks and several tens of thousands of gray SIM-cards, thanks to which attackers called their victims from unknown numbers. Almost three dozen criminal cases have been initiated. But the scale of the "black" industry is much broader, experts said. Over the past year, fraudsters have swindled almost 16 billion rubles from Russians, the Central Bank said.
Calls from call centers
Since the beginning of 2023, security forces have seized equipment for phone fraud, which provided up to 20 million calls a day, said at a hearing in the Public Chamber, the representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Sergey Erokhin. According to him, during the same time, during searches and other operational activities, about 400 SIM-banks (devices with the function of transmitting a signal through an IP network) and 200 thousand SIM-cards of various telecom operators were found. With their help, employees of call centers called Russians, extorting money from them. 27 people were brought to criminal responsibility for using the equipment for fraudulent purposes.
In 2023, every third crime was committed using digital technologies, while in 2022 — every fourth. And the total number of virtual thefts increased by 20%.
Crime is migrating to the digital space and has reached the level of a national disaster, stated Vladimir Vinnytsky, a member of the Commission on Security and Interaction with the POC of the Public Chamber.
"There is no reason for criminals to rob someone on the street or break into someone's apartment, risking themselves," he said. — They can now do all this in complete comfort and security at the computer in the call center.
According to Sergey Erokhin, now Russians are constantly terrorized by more than a thousand call centers of intruders. He said that such enterprises are scattered throughout the near abroad-Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and other neighboring countries.
- Mass call service can be bought for money — - said Vladimir Vinnitsky. - For this, organizations face a fine of 500 thousand rubles, but for them this is a penny. Now a bill is being prepared for the second reading, which will increase the fine to 1 million rubles, but this is still not a serious amount.
As previously reported by Izvestia, phone numbers become known to scammers due to regular leaks of personal data. Their mobile phones, surnames and first names get into the Network from telephone operators, taxi ordering services, tickets, food delivery, and sometimes from government agencies, Vladimir Vinnytsky reminded.
How SIM banks work
SIM banks — or SIM boxes) are devices that allow you to simultaneously use multiple SIM cards to make calls, send messages or use the mobile Internet, Maxim Gryazev, an expert at the Softline Group's digital threat analysis and assessment service, explained to Izvestia. This equipment can automatically switch between SIM cards to minimize the cost of calls or to bypass the tariff restrictions of operators.
- Fraudsters use SIM boxes to disguise their activities as regular mobile calls, which makes it difficult to track and block their illegal operations. With their help, they can make calls with a change in the caller's number, which allows them to present themselves as banks, government services or other organizations to deceive victims, " he explained.
The fact that criminals are actively using SIM boxes, at the Ural Forum of the Central Bank on cybersecurity in February 2024, said the deputy chairman of Sberbank Stanislav Kuznetsov. According to him, these tools simplify mass calls of citizens.
There are many sources of SIM cards for such activities, said Ashot Oganesyan, founder of the DLBI darknet intelligence and monitoring service. This is the black secondary market, where used numbers are sold, and employees of communication salons who draw up cards for the left passport data, and corporate cards.
— Recently, there have even been "franchises" of SIM boxes, where you can buy equipment and SIM cards yourself, and then earn money on traffic. The fact that such work is illegal and dangerous is of course not mentioned, " Ashot Oganesyan said.
In general, the use of SIM boxes and SIM cards is legal in various scenarios — including call center operations that seek to minimize telephone costs, said Maxim Gryazev from Softline Group. The problem is not the hardware itself, but the purpose of using it.
"Criminal cases against call center administrators are initiated not for the very fact of using SIM boxes, but for committing illegal activities with their help, for example, fraud, spoofing numbers or distributing malware," he said.
Credit fraud records
Since the beginning of 2024, Roskomnadzor has already recorded 19 major leaks, about 510 million records about citizens have got into the Network, the agency told Izvestia. Therefore, one of the key points of the hearings in the CC of the Russian Federation was the thesis about the need to adopt a law that will reduce the collection of citizens ' data to a minimum.
The State also takes other measures. In 2021, the Federal Antimonopoly Service and telecom operators signed a memorandum on countering illegal calls. And at the end of 2022, a single Anti-fraud phone call verification platform was created (its moderators are telecom operators and Roskomnadzor), which in December 2023 was able to stop more than 120 million calls from phone scammers.
In the same 2023 year, the Ministry of Digital Development blocked 575.6 thousand phone numbers of fraudsters. However, despite all these efforts, the number of money stolen from Russians in 2023 increased by 11.5% and amounted to 15.8 billion rubles (in 2022 — 14.2 billion), said Andrey Vybornov, Deputy Director of the Information Policy Department of the Bank of Russia.
"These are the operations that banks missed for one reason or another, or customers insisted that this operation should be carried out," he said.
Most of the money was "stolen" from bank cards, but the new growing "anti-trend" of this year was credit fraud, said Andrey Vybornov.
- Malefactors began to take people out to get loans — - he said. "People are enslaved. Therefore, the main task of this year is to introduce anti-fraud procedures into the retail credit pipeline.
The expert stressed that only a third of the victims apply to banks for compensation of stolen money, and the level of refunds remains extremely low: in 2023 — 8.7% (1.3 million rubles), in 2022 — 4.4% (618 million rubles). The reason is that people give their money to fraudsters themselves and it is not always possible to cancel such operations in time.
Nikolay Veselikhin, head of the Judicial Practice Department of the Center for Legal Assistance to Citizens in the Digital Environment, said that in 2023-2024, 4.3 thousand people applied to the center for help, for whom loans and microloans were issued.
Among them is a resident of Yekaterinburg, for whom 17 loans were issued simultaneously throughout the country. We wanted to issue 40 applications, but the other MFIs did not approve them.
— The fact that he became the owner of loans, the man found out by SMS from one of the creditors, - said the expert. — Some of the contracts were subsequently canceled, but the person received a damaged credit history.
There were also more exotic cases — scammers illegally registered more than 80 sites selling alcohol on a resident of Bashkortostan. For this, Rosalkogolregulirovanie imposed dozens of fines on her.
— Before the intervention of our lawyers, the woman even managed to serve a day of administrative arrest, - said Nikolai Veselikhin. — The court declared the contracts null and void, and now we are appealing against several dozen protocols on administrative offenses under which she was involved.
This case, the expert added, led to a change in the rules for registering domain names in the Russian Federation. Now domain delegation can be terminated at the request of Roskomnadzor, if such a domain is registered without the consent of the citizen.
Don't call me, don't call me
According to mobile operators, a crucial role in countering criminals is played by the issue of uncontrolled distribution of gray, that is, anonymous, SIM cards (they are also called spam cards). Today, according to experts, there are about 7.5 million of them in Russia.
The problem can be solved if every SIM card in Russia is verified by its holder through the public services portal, says Vitaly Nedykhalov, Director for Work with Public Authorities of PJSC Vimpelcom.
— The second solution is to limit the number of SIM cards transferred to one client, " the expert said. — Now the law does not restrict subscribers, as a result, up to a thousand SIM cards can be issued per person. The problem has reached a large scale.
Kaspersky Lab expert Sergey Golovanov suggested introducing a ban on the free import of SIM blocks in Russia, as well as licenses for virtual automatic telephone exchange devices, if they are not owned by telecom operators.
Calls from call centers
Since the beginning of 2023, security forces have seized equipment for phone fraud, which provided up to 20 million calls a day, said at a hearing in the Public Chamber, the representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Sergey Erokhin. According to him, during the same time, during searches and other operational activities, about 400 SIM-banks (devices with the function of transmitting a signal through an IP network) and 200 thousand SIM-cards of various telecom operators were found. With their help, employees of call centers called Russians, extorting money from them. 27 people were brought to criminal responsibility for using the equipment for fraudulent purposes.
In 2023, every third crime was committed using digital technologies, while in 2022 — every fourth. And the total number of virtual thefts increased by 20%.
Crime is migrating to the digital space and has reached the level of a national disaster, stated Vladimir Vinnytsky, a member of the Commission on Security and Interaction with the POC of the Public Chamber.
"There is no reason for criminals to rob someone on the street or break into someone's apartment, risking themselves," he said. — They can now do all this in complete comfort and security at the computer in the call center.
According to Sergey Erokhin, now Russians are constantly terrorized by more than a thousand call centers of intruders. He said that such enterprises are scattered throughout the near abroad-Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and other neighboring countries.
- Mass call service can be bought for money — - said Vladimir Vinnitsky. - For this, organizations face a fine of 500 thousand rubles, but for them this is a penny. Now a bill is being prepared for the second reading, which will increase the fine to 1 million rubles, but this is still not a serious amount.
As previously reported by Izvestia, phone numbers become known to scammers due to regular leaks of personal data. Their mobile phones, surnames and first names get into the Network from telephone operators, taxi ordering services, tickets, food delivery, and sometimes from government agencies, Vladimir Vinnytsky reminded.
How SIM banks work
SIM banks — or SIM boxes) are devices that allow you to simultaneously use multiple SIM cards to make calls, send messages or use the mobile Internet, Maxim Gryazev, an expert at the Softline Group's digital threat analysis and assessment service, explained to Izvestia. This equipment can automatically switch between SIM cards to minimize the cost of calls or to bypass the tariff restrictions of operators.
- Fraudsters use SIM boxes to disguise their activities as regular mobile calls, which makes it difficult to track and block their illegal operations. With their help, they can make calls with a change in the caller's number, which allows them to present themselves as banks, government services or other organizations to deceive victims, " he explained.
The fact that criminals are actively using SIM boxes, at the Ural Forum of the Central Bank on cybersecurity in February 2024, said the deputy chairman of Sberbank Stanislav Kuznetsov. According to him, these tools simplify mass calls of citizens.
There are many sources of SIM cards for such activities, said Ashot Oganesyan, founder of the DLBI darknet intelligence and monitoring service. This is the black secondary market, where used numbers are sold, and employees of communication salons who draw up cards for the left passport data, and corporate cards.
— Recently, there have even been "franchises" of SIM boxes, where you can buy equipment and SIM cards yourself, and then earn money on traffic. The fact that such work is illegal and dangerous is of course not mentioned, " Ashot Oganesyan said.
In general, the use of SIM boxes and SIM cards is legal in various scenarios — including call center operations that seek to minimize telephone costs, said Maxim Gryazev from Softline Group. The problem is not the hardware itself, but the purpose of using it.
"Criminal cases against call center administrators are initiated not for the very fact of using SIM boxes, but for committing illegal activities with their help, for example, fraud, spoofing numbers or distributing malware," he said.
Credit fraud records
Since the beginning of 2024, Roskomnadzor has already recorded 19 major leaks, about 510 million records about citizens have got into the Network, the agency told Izvestia. Therefore, one of the key points of the hearings in the CC of the Russian Federation was the thesis about the need to adopt a law that will reduce the collection of citizens ' data to a minimum.
The State also takes other measures. In 2021, the Federal Antimonopoly Service and telecom operators signed a memorandum on countering illegal calls. And at the end of 2022, a single Anti-fraud phone call verification platform was created (its moderators are telecom operators and Roskomnadzor), which in December 2023 was able to stop more than 120 million calls from phone scammers.
In the same 2023 year, the Ministry of Digital Development blocked 575.6 thousand phone numbers of fraudsters. However, despite all these efforts, the number of money stolen from Russians in 2023 increased by 11.5% and amounted to 15.8 billion rubles (in 2022 — 14.2 billion), said Andrey Vybornov, Deputy Director of the Information Policy Department of the Bank of Russia.
"These are the operations that banks missed for one reason or another, or customers insisted that this operation should be carried out," he said.
Most of the money was "stolen" from bank cards, but the new growing "anti-trend" of this year was credit fraud, said Andrey Vybornov.
- Malefactors began to take people out to get loans — - he said. "People are enslaved. Therefore, the main task of this year is to introduce anti-fraud procedures into the retail credit pipeline.
The expert stressed that only a third of the victims apply to banks for compensation of stolen money, and the level of refunds remains extremely low: in 2023 — 8.7% (1.3 million rubles), in 2022 — 4.4% (618 million rubles). The reason is that people give their money to fraudsters themselves and it is not always possible to cancel such operations in time.
Nikolay Veselikhin, head of the Judicial Practice Department of the Center for Legal Assistance to Citizens in the Digital Environment, said that in 2023-2024, 4.3 thousand people applied to the center for help, for whom loans and microloans were issued.
Among them is a resident of Yekaterinburg, for whom 17 loans were issued simultaneously throughout the country. We wanted to issue 40 applications, but the other MFIs did not approve them.
— The fact that he became the owner of loans, the man found out by SMS from one of the creditors, - said the expert. — Some of the contracts were subsequently canceled, but the person received a damaged credit history.
There were also more exotic cases — scammers illegally registered more than 80 sites selling alcohol on a resident of Bashkortostan. For this, Rosalkogolregulirovanie imposed dozens of fines on her.
— Before the intervention of our lawyers, the woman even managed to serve a day of administrative arrest, - said Nikolai Veselikhin. — The court declared the contracts null and void, and now we are appealing against several dozen protocols on administrative offenses under which she was involved.
This case, the expert added, led to a change in the rules for registering domain names in the Russian Federation. Now domain delegation can be terminated at the request of Roskomnadzor, if such a domain is registered without the consent of the citizen.
Don't call me, don't call me
According to mobile operators, a crucial role in countering criminals is played by the issue of uncontrolled distribution of gray, that is, anonymous, SIM cards (they are also called spam cards). Today, according to experts, there are about 7.5 million of them in Russia.
The problem can be solved if every SIM card in Russia is verified by its holder through the public services portal, says Vitaly Nedykhalov, Director for Work with Public Authorities of PJSC Vimpelcom.
— The second solution is to limit the number of SIM cards transferred to one client, " the expert said. — Now the law does not restrict subscribers, as a result, up to a thousand SIM cards can be issued per person. The problem has reached a large scale.
Kaspersky Lab expert Sergey Golovanov suggested introducing a ban on the free import of SIM blocks in Russia, as well as licenses for virtual automatic telephone exchange devices, if they are not owned by telecom operators.
