Smishing

In telecommunications, Smishing is phishing carried out over SMS, in which attackers send messages with malicious links or instructions to harvest credentials, install malware, or trigger fraudulent transactions. Operators mitigate smishing through SMS firewalls, content-based filtering, sender-ID validation, and abuse reporting integrated with the GSMA T-ISAC.

Categories: Radio Access NetworkSecurity ControlsThreats and Attacks

Smishing in context

The radio access network is where mobile devices attach to the operator's infrastructure. Attacks in this layer include IMSI catching, rogue base stations and downgrade attacks; defenses rest on mutual authentication, integrity-protected signaling and Open RAN supply-chain hygiene.

Security controls span signaling firewalls (SS7/Diameter/GTP screening), transport encryption (IPsec, TLS, PRINS), identity and access on OSS/BSS, and monitoring at both packet and log level. Controls are audited against GSMA FS.11/FS.19/FS.20/FS.36.

To place Smishing in the wider telecom-security picture, review SCP Abuse, ICMP, NTP, Vishing, A5/0 and DNS: each entry cross-references back to this page so you can walk the topic in either direction.

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