China Cybercriminals Behind Toll-Themed Smishing Attacks Surge in the US and UK
Resecurity warns that a China-based cybercriminal gang dubbed the “Smishing Triad” is launching a wave of road toll-themed SMS phishing (smishing) attacks against users across the US and the UK.
The researchers predict that these campaigns will spread to other countries as well.
Resecurity states, “These campaigns involve fraudulent text messages claiming unpaid toll bills or payment requests related to toll services like FasTrak, E-ZPass, and I-Pass, which is expected to expand to similar services worldwide as their earlier campaigns did.” This particular campaign has used tens of thousands of domains to target millions of users since the beginning of the year.
“The campaign has utilized over 60,000 domain names, making it difficult for platforms like Apple and Android to block fraudulent activity effectively,” the researchers write. “A significant spike in these activities was observed at the beginning of Q1 2025, with millions of consumers targeted. Some malicious texts have been sent from UK numbers leveraging underground bulk IM/SMS services.”
Resecurity notes that abusing SMS and other messaging services to send phishing texts can be more likely to reach users than other methods. “These techniques are challenging for consumers to mitigate because actors are impersonating legitimate organizations by spoofing Senders ID (SID),” the researchers explain.
“They also leverage SMS, iMessage, and similar instant messaging (IM) apps that have reduced spam protection compared to email service providers. End users place more trust in these types of messages than in email, and these messages also create a sense of urgency for users to resolve the issue. This results in a significantly higher expected conversion rate than email, SEO, and other techniques the actors could use.”
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