T1448: Carrier Billing Fraud
A malicious app may trigger fraudulent charges on a victim’s carrier billing statement in several different ways, including SMS toll fraud and SMS shortcodes that make purchases.
Performing SMS fraud relies heavily upon the fact that, when making SMS purchases, the carriers perform device verification but not user verification. This allows adversaries to make purchases on behalf of the user, with little or no user interaction.[1]
Malicious applications may also perform toll billing, which occurs when carriers provide payment endpoints over a web page. The application connects to the web page over cellular data so the carrier can directly verify the number, or the application must retrieve a code sent via SMS and enter it into the web page.[1]
On iOS, apps cannot send SMS messages.
On Android, apps must hold the `SEND_SMS` permission to send SMS messages. Additionally, Android version 4.2 and above has mitigations against this threat by requiring user consent before allowing SMS messages to be sent to premium numbers [2].
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Carrier Billing Fraud
A malicious app may trigger fraudulent charges on a victim’s carrier billing statement in several different ways, including SMS toll fraud and SMS shortcodes that make purchases.
Performing SMS fraud relies heavily upon the fact that, when making SMS purchases, the carriers perform device verification but not user verification. This allows adversaries to make purchases on behalf of the user, with little or no user interaction.[1]
Malicious applications may also perform toll billing, which occurs when carriers provide payment endpoints over a web page. The application connects to the web page over cellular data so the carrier can directly verify the number, or the application must retrieve a code sent via SMS and enter it into the web page.[1]
On iOS, apps cannot send SMS messages.
On Android, apps must hold the `SEND_SMS` permission to send SMS messages. Additionally, Android version 4.2 and above has mitigations against this threat by requiring user consent before allowing SMS messages to be sent to premium numbers [2].
How security teams should use this page
Treat this object as behavior context, not an attribution claim. Validate the related groups, software, data sources, and mitigations against official ATT&CK relationships and your own telemetry before making control-coverage decisions.
Related techniques
This mirrors the MITRE pattern of making group, software, campaign, and technique relationships scannable. Relationship notes come from mirrored ATT&CK relationship text when available.
| Domain | ID | Name | Relationship / procedure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mobile | T1643 | Generate Traffic from Victim | This object revoked by Generate Traffic from Victim. |
All related ATT&CK context
Object version and sync metadata
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Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases (1)
| Release | Bundle imported | Object version | Modified | Status | Raw hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19.1 | 2.0 | Current bundle Revoked | 8a96b7c00f75… |
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External references and citations
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[1]
Google Bread
A. Guertin, V. Kotov, Android Security & Privacy Team. (2020, January 9). PHA Family Highlights: Bread (and Friends) . Retrieved April 27, 2020.
Open source URL -
[2]
AndroidSecurity2014
Google. (2014). Android Security 2014 Year in Review. Retrieved December 12, 2016.
Open source URL -
[3]
mitre-attack T1448Open source URL
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