How are hackers targeting users
As per the report by cybersecurity firm CloudSEK, scammers are posting fake customer care numbers and uploading multiple sets of similar-looking hotel room images in the review section of the hotel listings on Google.
“The phone numbers are written so that Optical Character Recognition (OCR) – a technology that extracts text from images, cannot read them but are readable by humans,” the researchers said, cited by news agency IANS.
Furthermore, analysis of the reviews posted by the threat actors suggested that they are not limited to any particular geographical area, however, the campaign is majorly observed in the pilgrimage cities, such as Jagannath Puri, Ujjain, and Varanasi.
Additionally, researchers claim that hotels and homestays across price categories are being used to lure customers.
“The threat actors regularly create new Google accounts and use new phone numbers to keep the scam running. It remains to be seen whether this campaign is operated by a single actor or a group of people,” they added.
How Indians are at risk
With fake customer care numbers, scammers can lure potential targets into paying for hotels, which could result in monetary losses for the victim.
The researchers were able to uncover multiple Google accounts advertising different numbers. On average, 126 calls were made from each number.
They also searched the numbers on Truecaller and records indicated that around 71% of the calls from the 19 fake numbers discovered during research were answered by individuals who could become victims.
“Notably, the names associated with the scanned numbers on Truecaller profiles did not match the names linked to their Google accounts. Multiple Google accounts were observed advertising different phone numbers in a single hotel listing,” the CloudSEK team noted.
Additionally, the scam also results in denting the hotels’ brand image, the researchers added.
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