SMS pumping detection involves spotting unusual patterns of SMS traffic. Often, this attack is perpetrated by automated scripts that send large volumes of unsolicited messages to a victim’s phone number, jamming their inbox and blocking legitimate messages. Detecting this type of fraud is critical for ensuring that your business can continue to provide a reliable messaging service. Fortunately, there are several signs that can help you identify SMS pumping in real time.

Real-Time IP Abuse Data: A Powerful Tool for Security Teams

Unlike most other fraud attacks, the purpose of SMS pumping is not to hijack accounts or launder funds. Instead, the goal is to route one-time passcodes (OTPs) and two-factor authentication (2FA) requests through premium-rate numbers they control. Fraudsters use bots to generate a high volume of OTP and 2FA requests in rapid succession, and they spoof simple characteristics such as IP address and user-agent to avoid detection by standard filters. They then funnel the messages through a SIM farm or carrier/aggregator that charges for each message, and they skim a share of the revenue.

This attack can have a significant impact on businesses, causing their SMS delivery to slow down significantly and disrupting the user experience for real customers trying to receive their OTP or 2FA codes. It can also cause errors in OTP/2FA step-up flows that could lead to customer churn. In many cases, fraud and risk teams miss SMS pumping because it doesn’t look like the typical types of fraud they are used to seeing in their own business. In these cases, Infobip Signals can act as a security water filter to remove all of the bogus traffic before it reaches your business.