With fraud rates on the rise, it’s more important than ever for businesses to understand how common SMS fraud schemes work and strategies for preventing them. One such scheme, known as SMS pumping attacks, is particularly difficult to detect.

A common prevent SMS pumping attacks is to use bots and scripts to generate a large volume of OTP or 2FA SMS messages. These are sent to premium-rate numbers controlled by the bad actors or their complicit partners, who then skim a slice of the SMS fee. In this way, the attacker and their partners profit at each point in the messaging chain, while the business is left to cover the inflated SMS costs.

Detecting SMS pumping attacks is a challenge, but there are some clear red flags to look out for. For example, if you see high volumes of OTP or 2FA messages originating from countries and regions that aren’t normally associated with your business (such as Russia or Brazil), this may be an indication of SMS pumping. Likewise, if your OTP or 2FA SMS conversion rates drop suddenly, it could be a sign that attackers are exploiting your platform.

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Preventing SMS pumping attacks requires a combination of technical and operational measures. For example, implementing rate limiting at both the application and network levels can help to reduce the risk of these types of attacks. This can help to slow down fraudsters and deter them from engaging in this type of abuse. In addition, it’s important to educate your users about how to spot suspicious messages and report spam.