Towards Measuring the Role of Phone Numbers in Twitter-Advertised Spam

The telephony channel has become an attractive target for cyber criminals, who are using it to craft a variety of attacks. In addition to delivering voice and messaging spam, this channel is also being used to lure victims into calling phone numbers that are controlled by the attackers. One way this is done is by aggressively advertising phone numbers on social media (e.g., Twitter). This form of spam is then monetized over the telephony channel, via messages/calls made by victims. We refer to this type of attacks as outgoing phone communication (OPC) attacks.