Google sues China-based hacking group; says misusing big brands including E-ZPass, Google and others to ‘trap’ users

Google has filed a new lawsuit against a foreign cybercriminal organisation. The tech giant claims that the hacker group, based primarily in China, has been conducting a major SMS phishing, or “smishing,” operation in the US. The cybercrime group, which some cyber researchers call the “Smishing Triad,” uses a phishing-as-a-service kit named “Lighthouse” to create and launch attacks through fraudulent text messages. The crime group has reportedly amassed over a million victims across 120 countries, according to Google. Explaining the group’s tactics to CNBC, Google lawyer Halimah DeLaine Prado said: “They were preying on users’ trust in reputable brands such as E-ZPass, the US Postal Service, and even us as Google.” She added that the Lighthouse software “creates a bunch of templates in which you create fake websites to pull users’ information.”