The scammers made another code

Phone scammers began to change mobile phone numbers to international ones: at the beginning of 2023, according to telecom operators, most unwanted calls came to Russians from numbers using the codes of Japan, Korea, Kazakhstan, Turkey and Liechtenstein. Russian operators consider this strategy to be a consequence of the protection of domestic Russian traffic. Experts add that a unified system for blocking replacement numbers only within the framework of the Russian Federation is clearly not enough.

“Kommersant” got acquainted with the presentation of MegaFon, presented at the Ural forum “Cybersecurity in Finance” on February 15, dedicated to telephone fraud. It follows from it that the attackers, who use calls to steal funds from citizens, began to change phone numbers to foreign ones, but visually similar to Russian ones. So, most often in January 2023, numbers with the code +423 (Liechtenstein, masquerading as the code of Primorsky Krai), +905 (Turkey, supposedly mobile numbering), +472 (Norway, similar to the code of the Belgorod region) and so on were blocked. In total, the operator cites ten codes masquerading as Russian ones.

In general, the most frequent number used for substitution in MegaFon is +8 (1.2) (Japan and Korea) and +7 (international code used in Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation), which are not related to Russia. From the MegaFon presentation it follows that most often scammers use the numbers of small telecom operators, this is the “trend of 2023”, as well as calls via instant messengers. In 2022, MT Techno, NTSI Telecom, MTR-Svyaz, Nauka-Svyaz, for example, were fined 200–600 thousand rubles for passing traffic from spoof numbers. At the same time, according to MegaFon, in the first weeks of 2023 alone, more than 9 million calls were blocked with substitution for MTS, MegaFon, VimpelCom and Tele2 numbers. According to Kaspersky Lab, the largest number of unwanted calls at the end of 2022 came from Turkey, Kazakhstan and Iran.

Unwanted calls with international numbering began to come to Russians in the fall of 2022, explains Sergey Khrenov, director of fraud prevention at MegaFon, but “by December, the operator reduced their number to a minimum.” “We are actively fighting telephone scammers, so they are trying to look for new criminal schemes,” the top manager specified.

Amendments to the law “On Communications” adopted on July 2, 2021 oblige operators to block calls and SMS messages from substitution numbers. Operators also need to connect to the system created by Roskomnadzor and transfer the necessary information to it. Failure to comply with the requirements is punishable by a fine of up to 1 million rubles. The Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Main Radio Frequency Center” (GRTSCH), subordinated to Roskomnadzor, became the operator of the system, the corresponding draft government decree came into force from the beginning of 2023. Mintsifra, Roskomnadzor, telecom operators and law enforcement agencies also have access to the system.

“The use of international numbers indicates that the fight against the substitution of Russian numbers is ineffective and fraudsters are forced to resort to new schemes,” VimpelCom (Beeline brand) believes. Tele2 agrees that “the use of international calls by scammers was forced by effective protection on domestic traffic.” The company says that fraudulent calls from foreign numbers are much more expensive and less effective than replacing numbers with Russian ones. MTS does not observe an increase in calls or abnormal activity using foreign numbers.

Due to the reduction in the number of Russian numbers available for substitution, fraudsters have to look for foreign sources with which domestic operators did not have time to establish relations to verify contacts, said Pavel Kovalenko, director of the Informzaschita anti-fraud center. According to him, the current measures to combat intruders are as effective as technically possible, but a centralized system for checking and blocking spoof numbers in Russia alone is not enough.

Vadim Krasnikov, Tatiana Isakova