Threat of Technical Support Scams in Japan

Technical support scam is a criminal act of defrauding people of money by posing as technical support. Technical support scams are mainly perpetrated by through online advertisements and pop-ups that display fake virus infection warnings on victims' PCs. The warnings induce victims to a telephone call with an attacker posing as a legitimate technical support person. Many damages from technical support scams have been reported, especially in Japan. In technical support scams, attackers lie to victims through conversations that their PC is infected with malware and needs to be repaired. Then, they deceive the victim out of money by falsely claiming the cost of repairing the PC. Because technical support scams involve a conversation between the attacker and the victim, attack procedures and strategies should be influenced by differences in the victim's language and culture. However, only some studies have investigated the actual situation of technical support scam targeting Japan. Therefore, this study aims to clarify the actual situation of a technical support scam targeting Japan by communicating with the attackers from June to August 2023 and collecting call records for 349 minutes in total. We analyzed the collected data to identify the methods and strategies used by attackers of technical support scams targeting Japan to deceive their victims. In addition, we found that the location of attackers of technical support scams targeting Japan is biased toward certain countries and that organized attack activities are conducted using attack manuals tailored to Japanese victims.