{"id":15333,"date":"2025-12-02T15:18:43","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T22:18:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=15333"},"modified":"2025-09-24T15:24:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T22:24:00","slug":"security-expert-hacks-the-usps-text-scammers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=15333","title":{"rendered":"Security expert hacks the USPS text scammers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Grant Smith got one of the USPS delivery scam text messages. He decided to track the scammers and uncovered a Chinese-language group behind the campaign. He hacked their systems, discovered their mechanisms, and gathered victim data. He handed it to USPS, bank, and FBI investigators &#8211; as well published information about their operations online and at Defcon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He discovered the group sold their scamming kits to set up their own operations for a $200\/mo subscription. Similar scams showed up in half dozen other countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What&#8217;s interesting is he reported how many people fell for it. The triad sent 50,000-100,000 text messages a day. In total, US victims for just this one (albeit very large) operation entered 438,669 credit card numbers. Many people entered multiple cards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/usps-scam-text-smishing-triad\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/usps-scam-text-smishing-triad\/\">Read more about it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gLOv67LlIQs?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Grant Smith got one of the USPS delivery scam text messages. He decided to track the scammers and uncovered a Chinese-language group behind the campaign. He hacked their systems, discovered their mechanisms, and gathered victim data. He handed it to USPS, bank, and FBI investigators &#8211; as well published information about their operations online and at Defcon. He discovered the group sold their scamming kits to set up their own operations for a $200\/mo subscription. Similar scams showed up in&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=15333\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cool","category-technical"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WECr-3Zj","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15333"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15336,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15333\/revisions\/15336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}