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SMiShing

Social Engineering News: SMiShing 2022

By May 26, 2022August 23rd, 2025No Comments

SMiShing attacks continue to soar as more companies transition to a remote/hybrid workforce. According to a Pew Research Center survey, 59% of U.S. employees work from home all or most of the time. This transition means that employees are now more likely to use mobile devices such as a phone or tablet to access corporate information and accounts. Bad actors are taking notice and exploiting this reliance on mobile devices. They are using popular mobile messaging apps and digital channels that aid the productivity of remote workers such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Slack to facilitate attacks. As a result, SMiShing is a threat that companies can no longer ignore. 

What is SMiShing?

The word SMiShing comes from combining SMS (Short Message Service), the original technology which started mobile texting, with phishing. In either instance the goal of the bad actor is to steal personal or financial information.

The following social engineering news story shows how bad actors exploit messaging apps and digital channels

A sophisticated Teams attack. As reported on by VentureBeat, a bad actor posing as a CEO (Chief Executive Officer) known to be on a business trip to China, sent a WhatsApp message to several of the company’s employees asking them to join a Teams meeting. When the employees joined the Teams meeting, they thought they were seeing the CEO live on video. However, it was really a scraped video feed of the CEO from a past TV interview. To make the fraud more convincing, the bad actor added a fake background to make it appear that the CEO was really in China. Now for the twist, there was no audio feed for the Teams meeting. The “CEO” chatted that he was experiencing issues with the audio feed and told the employees, that “since I can’t make this work, send me the information on this SharePoint link.‘”

Social Engineering News SMiShing

Image: VentureBeat

Test, Educate and Protect with our Managed SMiShing Service

How can you protect your company from SMiShing attacks such as mentioned above? It’s important that your employees can identify an attack. At Social-Engineer, LLC our fully managed, enterprise scalable program measures and tracks how your employees respond to text-based phishing attacks with data driven targeting and training. Our fully managed SMiShing service features custom templates, tailored training based on failure, and comprehensive reporting. To schedule a consultation, please contact us today.

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Security Assessment Case Study
Learn more about the importance of a Social Engineering Risk Assessment.
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Learn more about the importance of a Social Engineering Risk Assessment.
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Download Now
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Download Now
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Most companies have a security awareness program in one form or another. If they don’t, it should be on the short list of programs to start as soon as possible. In our experience, many of these programs take the form of computer-based training.
Download Now
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Vishing (voice-based phishing) has been a problem for quite a long time. There are many vendors in the marketplace that offer vishing services. However they tend to use robo-callers or call centers for large volume engagements. If they are using trained humans to make calls, it is likely in very low numbers.
Download Now
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Your company is important. Indeed, the data you hold for your clients or employees is very valuable and attackers seek to capitalize on that data any way they can. This is where a Social Engineering Risk Assessment (SERA) engagement can help uncover possible vulnerability to attackers.
Download Now
Benefits of a Social-Engineering Risk Assessment Engagement
Your company is important. Indeed, the data you hold for your clients or employees is very valuable and attackers seek to capitalize on that data any way they can. This is where a Social Engineering Risk Assessment (SERA) engagement can help uncover possible vulnerability to attackers.
Download Now
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Download Now
The Business Value of the Social-Engineer Phishing Service
Cybercriminals are targeting the human element of organizations. Additionally, they are developing techniques to use an organization’s employees as the first point of entry. According to the 2021 Verizon DBIR report, of the 3,841 security breaches reported using social engineering, phishing was the key vector for over 80% of them.
Download Now