Trolling a Windows support scammer | Hacker News Reader

Trolling a Windows support scammer

arstechnica.com

I too try to ruin this business model by keeping them on the phone and wasting as much of their time as possible. One time I may or may not have been able to convince one of them to download a remote toolkit under the guise of sending him my 'banking and computer folder' to sort out the issue so I didn't 'go to jail'. I then may or may not have had fun bouncing around their network, opening CD drives, playing sounds, really brought me back to 8th grade hacking. I also may or may not have nuked their computers on my way out.

You may or may not be awesome.

I wish I had (may or may not have) done it myself!

I think I love you.

Trolling tech support scammers is a popular past-time on Reddit, particularly for users of Lenny, a robot that simulates a confused old man who meanders and segues into non-sequitur stories.

https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/

This one is easily one of my favorites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CsEuJNSnh8

My favorite is the one where apparently a car crashes into the call center(!?) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lL870ixdsY

I lost it at the ducks.

So it's autonomous or is it more like a soundboard?

It's an asterisk (VoIP server) script that rotates through a handful of sound files. It starts playing a new one as soon as the other end of the call is silent for a set amount of time.

Anyone who gets a spam call can just forward it to 1-347-514-7296 or sip:13475147296@in.callcentric.com (see the reddit link above for more info)

Watch the hoax hotel. It is one of the best channels for trolling scammers

2 hours? Amateur!

A combination of VirtualBox, Twilio, a VPN and an old i5 laptop allows for far longer scammer frustration.

Simply give them remote access (after hiding the VirtualBox tools) then turn down the core count, memory allocation and cap execution to 10%.

Have the VM connected to the VPN at the Host end to give it Internet access without exposing your own network.

Randomly disconnect the VPN for extra hilarity.

Yep, if I've nothing to do I just keep them talking. In my experience they almost never give up. I think they're told to keep talking until you hang up.

I've had them talking for about 30mins after I've called them out on the scam and just bluntly asked how it worked.

Did they tell you anything?

After I get tired, I usually start making snide remarks to get under their skin. They get so angry when you make remarks about their mother.

I can't believe she raised a low-life scammer. She must have been a terrible mother.

Seriously. Don't insult the scammer. They'll just hang up. Go for family, and all of sudden, this sense of honor spews forth to defend. The exasperated sighs from helping your willfully obtuse methods stop, and the angry shouting begins.

Schoolyard insults with a scammer is a good time-waster.

How and what for would you use the Twilio part of your setup?

It means you aren't missing any actual calls by keeping your PSTN line engaged, the call is recorded for hilarity, and you can take the call when you aren't at home.

You can make an otherwise boring car journey far more entertaining by having the scammer assist you rebooting your fictional router.

Also I've not tried this yet but supposedly it's now easy to log SIP devices in.

But now I'm wondering about putting them through to some ridiculous pre-recorded messages to hear the reaction...

I did have other things to do... (I'm the author.) Also, I fumbled on the VM setup with VirtualBox—should have just used my vSphere Windows 10 instance, but it was already set up for sandboxing malware.

Yup, been there done that too ... just could not resist. I stalled for 1/2 hours and finally I feigned acceptance to give them access to my PC to 'fix' it. At the last moment I asked the scammer if he could put me in contact with law enforcement so they could give me some assurance this was not a scam. Without skipping a beat, the scammer on the phone tells me "OK. Hold I will connect you to chief of police...", then not even changing his voice he start off again " Yes, hello chief of police here, all is good these are not scammers..." and then hangs up!

You can't make that stuff up, I laughed my head off. Good times.

I did this once, but I didn't want to continually talk to the guy to keep him on the phone. So when he told me to "turn my computer on", while it was supposedly booting, I said, "now it says, 'Installing Windows Updates, 14%, please don't turn off your computer'." And I kept giving him updates about every three minutes, "now it says 18%, gee it's really moving slow..." All told, I burned about 15 minutes on just the bootup. Then I told him, "hold on, there's someone at my front door, I'll see what they want and I'll be right back." I kept him on a muted speaker phone while I continued working. Every few minutes he would say "sir, are you there?" and eventually he gave up and hung up. The total time of the call was about 28 minutes, which is much much less than this guy's 2 hours, but it consumed very few brain cycles on my part. We never even got to the part where he was telling me what to do on my PC.

My favorite "nuke" of one of these scammers involved a guy who basically did the same thing, but set his VM up with a virus-ladened system image. The scammer of course got the virus, and it b0rked their system post-haste. They were not happy, according to the transcript. Oh well.

A virus can infect someone remotely viewing a system through TeamViewer?

I'm not sure what remote software they were using, but I do know they had spiked the filesystem with files the perps were downloading remotely (named in such a manner to make them seem like worthwhile targets). This was just something I read, so it may not be worth the electrons it was presented with...

What I learned from this is, that criminals using your tool can be an asset (free press) or a liability ("X did not respond"). Depending on some simple actions, you can be seen as either a crime fighter or partner in crime.

I did this once. Wound up being put on a list after the first time, and it seemed like they would give every new guy to me to call.

After the last time, I actually got started talking to the guy about their software and business model and stuff. He seemed really proud of their software, saying that it was probably better than most commercial AVs out there, but that they make the calls that they do simply as part of their business model. I gave him a few pointers on how to show someone they had actually been hacked, and sent him on his way.

Haven't gotten a call back since.

I have found the best thing to say is, "You need to stop doing crimes, so you can respect yourself again." Sometimes I have to say it twice to get a reaction. I have had people break down and cry, scream at me, etc.

What a waste of time.

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