Google Sues Chinese Cybercrime Operation That Used Gemini AI To Send Scam Texts (techcrunch.com) 10
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google is suing to dismantle the infrastructure behind an alleged massive AI-powered cybercrime operation. On Friday, the tech giant announced a lawsuit against an alleged Chinese cybercrime network called Outsider Enterprise, which Google says uses AI in its campaigns to send scam text messages impersonating Google and other brands to steal passwords and credit card numbers.
Outsider Enterprise has financially scammed "hundreds of thousands of victims" with losses "estimated in the millions." The group deployed 9,000 fake websites, 1 million fraudulent web domains, and 2.5 million texts sent to Android users in a two-week period, according to Google. "55,000 spam texts were flagged by Android users in just two weeks this past May -- that's more than two text spam complaints a minute," Google said.
Google said it uses "AI-powered tools to fight AI-powered scams", which enable the company to detect scams and alert users of suspicious calls and text messages, leading to the interception of more than 10 billion scam messages a month. The company said it has been collaborating with AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon to block the scam text messages and said it is coordinating with the FBI, which is taking unspecified law enforcement actions.
Outsider Enterprise has financially scammed "hundreds of thousands of victims" with losses "estimated in the millions." The group deployed 9,000 fake websites, 1 million fraudulent web domains, and 2.5 million texts sent to Android users in a two-week period, according to Google. "55,000 spam texts were flagged by Android users in just two weeks this past May -- that's more than two text spam complaints a minute," Google said.
Google said it uses "AI-powered tools to fight AI-powered scams", which enable the company to detect scams and alert users of suspicious calls and text messages, leading to the interception of more than 10 billion scam messages a month. The company said it has been collaborating with AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon to block the scam text messages and said it is coordinating with the FBI, which is taking unspecified law enforcement actions.
Were any Chinese laws violated? (Score:2)
Just asking for a friend in the business. But if you ask, I insist it was just a joke and there is no such friend.
Actually, I think the corruption is the most communist aspect of the story--but we Westerners are catching up fast.
Now about the AI part of it. The best new scam I've seen recently was actually almost a year ago and involved impersonating a celebrity. But from the tone of the scam at that time I considered it most likely to be using DeepSeek or possibly ChatGPT rather than Gemini or Copilot or C
Re: (Score:1)
Were any Chinese laws violated?
Doesn't matter either way, but if so Google is welcome to also sue them in China.
The reason they are suing in the USA is because 1) US laws were violated, and 2) this is a required first step to have other US companies take action against them.
It's a rare thing to just ask a bunch of telco networks to block transient traffic and they just say "sure!", throw away and ignore existing contracts with other telcos and potentially open themselves to lawsuits against them.
With a US court order those US telcos now
Finally! (Score:3)
Google wakes up. After allowing GMail users to spam the world with scams for years. They finally figured out that maybe this could damage their brand (not surprised if this was China's intent).
Now pardon me while I answer this message from Charles Ndungu Thuo.
Re:Finally! (Score:4, Funny)
Damn! You know Charles too!?
Some things that would be helpful (Score:5, Insightful)
2. The list of "9,000 fake websites". Same for these, and I'd like to see who's providing hosting for them.
This is a pet peeve of mine: reports like this come out, but the original source (Google in this case) doesn't publish the fundamental factual information that everyone needs to defend themselves AND to gain some understanding of how the threat works, so that everyone can defend themselves against the inevitable copycats. Instead we get a bunch of corporate PR-speak, which is utterly useless. So if you're reading this, Google: pony up.
Re:Some things that would be helpful (Score:4, Insightful)
2. The list of "9,000 fake websites". Same for these, and I'd like to see who's providing hosting for them.
Spoiler alert! That's gonna turn out to also be Google.
Tasting Scams (Score:2)
Classical tasting scams depended on a now closed weakness in the ICANN charging so if you had a small number of registrars (3 or 4?) you could keep a large number of domains tied up indefinitely by deleting them from one of your registrars & immediately re-registering on another. Stir, cycle & spin. I've not checked, but some registries may still be vulnerable.
When you are registering domains in large numbers the economics change. If the domains names are being used for scams and aren't being squatt