Adversaries may leverage messaging services for SMS pumping, which may impact system and/or hosted service availability.(Citation: Twilio SMS Pumping) SMS pumping is a type of telecommunications fraud whereby a threat actor first obtains a set of phone numbers from a telecommunications provider, then leverages a victim’s messaging infrastructure to send large amounts of SMS messages to numbers in that set. By generating SMS traffic to their phone number set, a threat actor may earn payments from the telecommunications provider.(Citation: Twilio SMS Pumping Fraud)
Threat actors often use publicly available web forms, such as one-time password (OTP) or account verification fields, in order to generate SMS traffic. These fields may leverage services such as Twilio, AWS SNS, and Amazon Cognito in the background.(Citation: Twilio SMS Pumping)(Citation: AWS RE:Inforce Threat Detection 2024) In response to the large quantity of requests, SMS costs may increase and communication channels may become overwhelmed.(Citation: Twilio SMS Pumping)
View in MITRE ATT&CK®Capability ID | Capability Description | Mapping Type | ATT&CK ID | ATT&CK Name | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
action.hacking.variety.Hijack | To assume control over and steal functionality for an illicit purpose (e.g. Hijacking phone number intercept SMS verification codes) | related-to | T1496.003 | Resource Hijacking: SMS Pumping |