A group of hackers from Taiwan have scammed a number of WhatsApp users by hijacking their accounts. More than 60 WhatsApp users have been duped for hundreds of thousands of dollars so far.
The hackers group targets the WhatsApp accounts that can be hijacked. Once they gain access to the account, they start sending out messages to their contacts. The hijacked accounts are instantly disabled so that hackers have the full access to their WhatsApp chats for few hours.
According to the victims of this scam, the group of hackers lures them into revealing WhatsApp’s account verification code. Once the code is revealed, the hackers get full access to the hijacker user’s WhatsApp account. The hackers then start sending messages to the contact lists asking to transfer money or point cards for online games.
Majority of these attacks were targeted towards WhatsApp users in Hong Kong. However, these scams are not just restricted to Hong Kong. There are similar incidents being reported from the rest of the world. The hackers group does not limit their reach and target to WhatsApp, they are exploiting other messaging platforms like WeChat.
The 60 people who have reported being duped have confirmed being duped for thousands of dollars. As per the police reports, this hacker group also accesses the victim’s Facebook accounts. Their efforts to extract money from friends of these targeted accounts continues until the victim re-authenticates WhatsApp account on their own device.
A source from police said, “Con artists accessed the WhatsApp accounts with the verification codes and they posed as the genuine users and sent a text to people on the contact lists to deceive them. The account holders were unable to use WhatsApp for up to 12 hours after their accounts were hijacked.”
If you receive a request to share WhatsApp authentication code, you need be cautious. It is possible that you might receive requests from your trusted contacts whose account has been hijacked.
Source:techgig.com
Author: THE HANS INDIA
Published at: Tue, 06 Feb 2018 18:40:31 +0530
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