SMS Pumping
Adversaries may leverage messaging services for SMS pumping, which may impact system and/or hosted service availability.(Citation: Twilio SMS Pumping) SMS pumping is a type of telecommunications fraud whereby a threat actor first obtains a set of phone numbers from a telecommunications provider, then leverages a victim’s messaging infrastructure to send large amounts of SMS messages to numbers in that set. By generating SMS traffic to their phone number set, a threat actor may earn payments from the telecommunications provider.(Citation: Twilio SMS Pumping Fraud)
Senses
Sense 1
Adversaries may leverage messaging services for SMS pumping, which may impact system and/or hosted service availability.(Citation: Twilio SMS Pumping) SMS pumping is a type of telecommunications fraud whereby a threat actor first obtains a set of phone numbers from a telecommunications provider, then leverages a victim’s messaging infrastructure to send large amounts of SMS messages to numbers in that set. By generating SMS traffic to their phone number set, a threat actor may earn payments from the telecommunications provider.(Citation: Twilio SMS Pumping Fraud)
Threat actors often use publicly available web forms, such as one-time password (OTP) or account verification fields, in order to generate SMS traffic. These fields may leverage services such as Twilio, AWS SNS, and Amazon Cognito in the background.(Citation: Twilio SMS Pumping)(Citation: AWS RE:Inforce Threat Detection 2024) In response to the large quantity of requests, SMS costs may increase and communication channels may become overwhelmed.(Citation: Twilio SMS Pumping)
- MITRE ATT&CK (CTI STIX Data)Jan 03, 2026MITRE ATT&CK CTI (STIX bundle)https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitre-attack/attack-stix-data/master/enterprise-attack/enterprise-attack.jsonSee repository LICENSE.txt for ATT&CK terms: non-exclusive royalty-free license; reproduce MITRE copyright + license in copies. Verify requirements before publishing quoted text.Source: MITRE ATT&CK (attack-stix-data).