Dominik Wojtczak, head of the Cybersecurity Institute at the University of Liverpool, said he believed the messages were part of a “spear phishing attack” and “the purpose is most likely to simply obtain indecent images of the victims and then blackmail them.”
Daniel Prince, a professor of cybersecurity at Lancaster University, said while such activity ranges from fraudulent romantic messages to “classic nation state espionage,” the speed at which these cases moved to exchanging explicit photos suggests it was less sophisticated.
But Ciaran Martin, former chief executive of the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre, said: “Malicious actors, including nation states, have a history of using digital messaging to try to cultivate relationships with people they think have political influence. Some of this activity is high quality and convincing. Some of it can be spotted a mile away.”
7) WhatsApp makes scamming easier
The rise of instant messaging and social networks makes targeted attacks easier to carry out, with malign actors able to create virtual numbers and buy cheap SIM cards on the high street.
John Scott Railton, a senior researcher in phishing at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, told POLITICO neither of the two phone numbers was registered to a mainstream mobile phone network.
When POLITICO later phoned the “Charlie” number, a man unconnected to the messages answered and said he had recently started using the number through TextMe — the U.S. based app supplies its users with temporary “assigned numbers” allowing them to send text messages. There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by the firm.