How Telus helped Toronto police crack ‘SMS Blaster’ scam-text operation

By Alexandra Posadzki

Last November, a company asked Telus to track down a scam text received by one of its customers.

Vancouver-based Telus blocks hundreds of thousands of malicious text messages that attempt to traverse its network every day, according to its chief security officer, Carey Frey. But the telecom couldn’t find any evidence of that particular message in its network logs.

Mr. Frey hypothesized that it may have originated from an SMS blaster – a powerful, portable cyberweapon that, up until that point, had never been detected in Canada.

His suspicions turned out to be correct, culminating in a months-long law enforcement investigation. On Thursday, Toronto Police announced they had arrested three men and charged them with 44 offences, including fraud and mischief, in connection with a cybercrime probe dubbed Project Lighthouse.

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Published by the Globe and Mail.