International Revenue Share Fraud (IRSF)
A security researcher details how their VoIP server was used as a honeypot to track a coordinated International Revenue Share Fraud (IRSF) botnet. The botnet compromised various high-profile organizations to dial premium-rate numbers.
Why it matters
It demonstrates the scale and sophistication of modern automated phone fraud and the vulnerability of corporate networks to simple bot infections.
A multinational bank, a US state, and a custom teddy-bear workshop all unwittingly joined the same phone-fraud botnet. Here's how to check whether one of your own machines got caught in the same honeypot.
On August 1st, Citigroup, the State of Idaho, and Build-A-Bear launched a coordinated attack on me. They weren't alone. Lockheed Martin joined in, along with the Spanish National Police, the Los Angeles Superior Court, SoftBank, Argentina's state oil company, a Swiss canton, a UK hedge fund, two universities, a hospital, and three additional international banks. A partial list of these organizations is at the bottom of this post.
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