On Wednesday, around 200,000 fraudulent calls were registered from North Korea aimed at Norwegian mobile subscribers.
“Fraudulent calls are a growing problem,” Telenor stated.
“Despite the fact that we stop an enormous amount (of the calls), there many still get exposed to fraud. We want to do something about that,” mobile director Ric Brown at Telenor Norway told newspaper VG.
The scam takes place by receiving a call – the caller quickly hangs up. If you call back, you often get charged a significant amount.
“But what happened on Wednesday was special. When so many calls come at the same time, it indicates a targeted attack on Norwegians.
“It is serious and will be reported to the police,” Thorbjørn Busch, a senior security adviser at Telenor Norway, noted.
Coordinated attack
The company’s figures show that just over 200,000 subscribers were called on Wednesday.
Over 8,000 called the unknown number back. Usually, around 7-8% call back, according to Telenor.
“In this case, the number is lower, so it is clear that Norwegians have become more aware of fraudulent calls. Many are still too polite and naive when answering unknown calls,” Busch pointed out.
Source: © NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today / #NorwayTodayNews
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I wonder why people reply to an unknown caller! Taking into consideration that there are many hackers the world over starting from Russia, Albania, Romania etc. one must be careful with his callers. Never ever reply to an unknown number.
Calling back to any unknown foreign number is really bad idea.
On the other hand, with good knowledge if IT anyone can impose any country code. Say, Ukrainians usually use Latvian and Lithuanian numbers for frauds. So I wouldn’t blame North Korea, it could be anyone, clever enough to impose.