WhatsApp scam: Cybercriminals target WhatsApp users with the promise of a ‘part-time’ job
New Delhi, January 11th, 2020: Certain messages received from differing phone numbers have been circulating on WhatsApp, promising part-time jobs that can allow one to earn money from home. These messages, which come with attached links, claim that one can earn 200 to 3000 rupees in a day in 10 to 30 minutes. CyberPeace Foundation, a think tank and grassroots NGO of cybersecurity and policy experts along with Autobot Infosec Private Ltd. launched an investigation into the matter.
The key findings of the aforementioned investigation as follows:
**Note: The information mentioned here has been extracted during the investigation, information might be changed after generating the reports.
- Multiple different links redirect to a common URL- https://wa.me/+919354962911?text=hi– and each link use different numbers to send a message.
- It can be observed that the same outgoing link is used for all the links with variation in the numbers. The parameter lang=_ _ in the links indicates that they can be redirected to WhatsApp in all regions and languages other than English.
- The IP address of the link is 47.75.111.165 and it can be traced to Alibaba Cloud, the city Hong Kong and the country China.
- The origin AS number AS45102 was also found to be used by other websites such as phoinos.com, zoomerry.com, chinafree.online, zoom-inn.com, suitianhose.com and minhang.work.
- In all the links, the same redirection and outgoing sources were generated, however, in one link, a different URL was found and one new IP address that belongs to one of China’s Hosting company Alibaba Cloud.
- When the URL is manipulated, an error code is displayed in the Chinese language.
- The domain names found during the investigation seem to have been registered from China.
