Fraud Radar Facilitates a New Revenue-Saving Approach to Stopping Fraud

Operators often use databases of fraudulent ranges to protect their networks from fraud attacks. Such databases contain previously compromised number ranges, as well as unallocated and unassigned numbers that are frequently used by fraudsters. These ranges are kept permanently blocked by the operator. Operators may even resort to a wider blockage of entire originating A or terminating B ranges during major attacks.

The drawbacks of the current approaches

Despite widespread use of these approaches, there are numerous flaws:

1. Fraudsters conduct attacks using allocated ranges and even numbers assigned to users to bypass database-facilitated protection measures.  
2. Blocking entire A or B ranges during attacks leads to an undesirable blockage of legitimate calls, resulting in customer churn and revenue losses.
3. Excessive blocking and a lack of automation in restoring normal call-flow levels after an attack can lead to an increase in revenue erosion over time. Moreover, anti-fraud teams spend hours every week manually maintaining their blocklists every week to ensure they are up-to-date.

The call hijacking case study

To understand the aforementioned problems better, let's consider the damage this approach can cause in the context of a call hijacking scenario:

1. Fraudsters gain access to an originating A number range, for example, by hacking a corporate PBX. 
2. The fraudsters then place calls to specific, expensive terminating B numbers and short-stop them. The calls never reach real B number end-users. 
3. The hackers and the rogue carriers share the revenue generated by the fraudulent calls, billed to the end customer or another carrier in the routing flow at the end of the month.

In the case of call hijacking, blocking the entire originating A range will not only block fraudulent calls from this range, but also the flow of legitimate calls to other destinations. At the same time, by blocking the terminating B range, all legitime traffic coming from non-fraudulent A numbers will also be blocked.

A typical example of such excessive blocking can be found throughout the industry, where fraud management teams block entire country codes for countries with high-termination rates to protect their customers.

AB Handshake introduces a new approach – granular blocking of A and B ranges for the duration of an attack

As you can see, blocking the entire compromised A or B range leads to unwanted, and often overwhelming, losses. Is it possible to stop fraudulent traffic without disrupting the legitimate flow of calls and revenue?

Our research at AB Handshake shows that this is achievable by introducing two adjustments to the blocking process: 

Firstly, once an attack is detected, only traffic from the compromised A range to the compromised B range should be blocked. Secondly, the ranges should be unblocked immediately once the attack is over. 

AB Handshake's new approach allows service providers and transit carriers to prevent fraud while avoiding excessive blockages and minimizing revenue losses. AB Handshake automates fraudulent range blocking to optimize fraud prevention workflow, saving your team time and human resources.

The power of Fraud Radar

AB Handshake’s revolutionary solution, Fraud Radar, enables a new blocking approach at the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO).

Fraud Radar sends real-time API alerts based on the collective intelligence of 140+ operators worldwide. The alerts indicate the compromised A and B range combinations and the types of fraud they are being used for with exceptional accuracy. Not only are you alerted when the attack starts, but you are also alerted when the attack is over. This means that you can block compromised ranges in your network immediately and unblock them when the attack ends, avoiding fraud-related losses and customer churn. 

Receive protection that is benefited by an automated, temporary blockage of A and B number ranges exclusively for the duration of an attack. Test the quality of our product for yourself with a free trial: