Illegally profiting billions of yuan! Police disclose details, over 14 million elderly phones charged, SMS blood sucking, Trojan implanted
Elderly people are getting older and using smartphones is inconvenient. Elderly phones that are easy to operate and have a long standby time are the preferred choice for many elderly people.
The elderly phone originally only had basic functions such as answering and making calls, but Mr. Zhang, who lives in Panzhihua, found that his elderly phone had generated many small value-added services such as "mobile phone reports", "safe weather", and "startup reminders" for no reason. He suspected that the elderly phone was infected with a virus, so he reported the case to the public security organs. After investigation by the police, it was discovered that tens of millions of elderly phones were implanted with Trojan viruses and illegally profited billions of yuan through "text message bloodsucking" in a major case involving online black and gray industries.
On September 15th, the Public Security Bureau of Panzhihua City, Sichuan Province held a press conference on the "2023 Cybersecurity Awareness Week" and announced the case of illegal control of computer information systems. At present, the case is still under investigation.
Mobile phone involved in the case
The more phone bills are deducted, the more they are charged
Value added service of "automatic ordering" for elderly machines
Mr. Zhang bought a simple elderly phone for the convenience of contacting the elderly at home. The elderly person only uses it to answer calls and never dials outside.
When paying the phone bill to the elderly, Mr. Zhang found that the phone bill was increasing every month. At first, Mr. Zhang thought it was an elderly person who accidentally touched the phone and incurred the cost, but he didn't pay much attention. However, since June 2022, elderly people have been using their phones less frequently for several consecutive months, while their phone bills have been deducted more and more.
Mr. Zhang, who felt there was something suspicious, went to the business hall to inquire and found out that the user had ordered small value-added services such as "mobile phone reports", "safe weather", and "startup reminders". But Mr. Zhang searched through the old man's phone and did not see any text messages about opening services. In addition, the old man could not order on his own, so he suspected that his phone was infected with a virus. He quickly took his phone and reported to the public security organs.
More than 14 million mobile phones nationwide
Implanted into a Trojan horse
After receiving the alarm, police officers from the Panzhihua Public Security Bureau began to investigate the value-added service of mobile phone automatic ordering. On September 29th last year, police officers suddenly discovered during the "network investigation" work that 89 mobile phones in Panzhihua City had abnormal situations of 2G network traffic consumption and additional value-added business consumption ordered by non phone owners themselves, which was very similar to the experience of the reporter Mr. Zhang. It is suspected that the mobile phones were remotely controlled.
The police conducted offline visits, investigations, and verifications on "mobile phones suspected of being remotely controlled", and conducted data backtracking online to trace the source. They found that many elderly phones were engaged in "automatic ordering" value-added services, with monthly deduction of related value-added service fees ranging from 1 yuan to 10 yuan. Many elderly people, due to their unfamiliarity with mobile phone operations, often believe that it is their own accidental touch that caused long-term losses.
Police investigation and evidence collection
The cybersecurity police found that these mobile network data were all linked to servers with the same domain name. After remote investigation, it was determined that the server was the Trojan server used by criminals to commit criminal acts. Through data tracking, it was found that over 14 million mobile phones nationwide were controlled by the Trojan server.
4 criminal gangs
Illegally profiting billions of yuan
Through multiple investigations and evidence collection, the police successfully locked the identity of suspect Kong, who rented the server, and used Kong as a breakthrough to dig deeply along the line. A criminal gang illegally controlling the "old age machine" gradually emerged.
After investigation, it was found that criminal gangs implanted Trojan programs into mobile phone motherboards during their cooperation with multiple manufacturers. After the sale of mobile phones equipped with the above-mentioned motherboard, the criminal gang controls the data transmission through the previously implanted Trojan program, obtains user phone numbers, SMS content and other information, and sends them back to the Chen gang's backend database.
Afterwards, the "operation specialist" of the gang used a mobile Trojan program to send a text message confirming the activation of value-added subscription services to mobile users, while controlling the mobile terminal to automatically reply with a "Y" to activate. After a series of operations were completed, the SMS records sent and received were deleted, so that mobile users could not be aware of it.
By using such covert criminal techniques, the four criminal gangs in this case illegally profited billions of yuan.
Suspect is captured
23 people from 4 criminal gangs have been arrested
The entire chain of the "SMS blood sucking" case has been solved
In January 2023, the Panzhihua Police Task Force mobilized elite police forces and formed two advance teams to conduct close range investigations in Shenzhen and Beijing.
On February 1 of this year, the special team transferred more than 80 police forces to form more than 30 arrest teams, and rushed to 10 cities in four provinces, including Guangdong, Beijing, Hainan, and Hunan, to carry out centralized arrest operations. It successfully defeated four criminal gangs led by Mr. Chen, Mr. Yang, Mr. Pang, and Mr. Lin, captured 23 suspect, frozen and detained more than 60 million yuan of funds involved in the case, and detained four vehicles and one house property involved. At this point, the case of "SMS bloodsucking" has been fully resolved throughout the entire chain.
As of February 2023, the gang illegally controlled up to 14 million elderly mobile phones, with a particularly large number of controlled phones and extremely negative social impact.
At present, the case has been transferred to 12 people for prosecution, and 11 people are on bail awaiting trial. The case is still under investigation.
