Running and managing your business as an internet service provider (ISP) is already a major challenge due to numerous network abuse issues your abuse team deals with every day. It doesn’t help them when they realize the things they continually weed out to keep users happy can potentially get worse. Network abuse keeps evolving into more malicious programs and viruses potentially plaguing users and your company in numerous ways.
While you’ve likely heard plenty about attacks like ransomware, yet another threat looms large: ISP impersonation. It’s a serious new threat where hackers manage to impersonate not only a user’s ISP, they also mimic tech support.
See also: 5 Biggest DDoS Attacks Of The Past Decade
The question is, do you have the tools necessary to fight back against ISP impersonators? Let’s look at how ISP impersonation works, signs to look out for, and how to solve it before it becomes a big problem.
The Growth of Tech Support Scams
As Graham Cluley noted recently, tech support scams aren’t anything new. What’s concerning is they’ve simply evolved into a new plateau of sophistication and nefariousness.
It once was these scams merely concocted fake anti-virus alerts or did cold calls by phone to users’ homes. You still see this worldwide, though hackers found a way to send pop-up messages directly to ISP users with overly convincing tactics.
What may concern you more is many of these faux tech support pop-ups managed to infiltrate major ISPs like Comcast and AT&T. Many ISPs in other countries recently experienced this as well.
When these pop-ups come up, they even use the logo of the ISP to look legitimate. The message usually states the user has a malicious virus on their computer with risks to personal information. At the end of the pop-up, they typically give a phone number to call, or a direct link.
Gaining Remote Access to User Computers
Your ISP users could suffer significant danger with ISP impersonation because if a customer calls the number in the pop-up, the scammer tricks the caller into remote computer access. Once the scammers gain access, personal information can instantly become compromised.
These criminals also extort hundreds of dollars from your customers to repair non-existent problems with their computers.
See also: 6 Long-Term Strategies To Eliminate Blacklistings From Your Hosted Network
So how does this new breed of hackers manage to find out the type of ISP your customers use?
The New Malicious Way to Impersonate Your ISP
Hackers now place ads on websites that manage to install malware on user computers. The malware redirects users to a website where the hacker can scope out the victim’s ISP address. In turn, thieves use this information to build convincing pop-ups to appear suddenly on all your users’ screens.
By using fear to compel your customers to take action, it’s time you take action as an ISP. Having this occur regularly could quickly sully your reputation in the industry.
Solving the ISP Impersonation Problem
AbuseHQ is available as a platform designed to optimally weed out network threats affecting you and your customers. With proper security in place, you’ll quickly find out if someone impersonated your ISP and continually sends fake tech support pop-ups.
It’s important to have these security tools all in one place to make it easier on your network abuse team. Now they can use more enhanced preventative measures to prevent the worst network attacks from ever occurring. If something does occur, they’ll know exactly how to address it before it gets out of hand.
Contact us to learn more about AbuseHQ and how you can better protect your network from spam, hackers, and malicious activity.