Slashdot: Carrier Caught Injecting 'SMS AD' Into Google Verification Code Message

Carrier Caught Injecting 'SMS AD' Into Google Verification Code Message
Published on July 01, 2021 at 03:32AM
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: SMS is widely regarded as an insecure form of two-factor authentication, and another example of this has just emerged. A carrier looks to be injecting ads into the Google verification code used to sign in to services like Gmail. Action Launcher developer Chris Lacy today tweeted how his Google verification code -- which starts with "G-" -- featured an "SMS AD." The advertisement -- for a VPN -- includes a quick message and short URL. For those that immediately suspect this is just a phishing attempt, the verification code is legitimate and was requested by Lacy to successfully verify a login attempt. Google Messages even flagged the link/message as spam. As such, Googlers responding to the thread suspect this is an occurrence of a carrier appending an ad -- note the extra spaces -- into a real text message. It's very unlikely that Google's security teams would allow advertising into a very crucial part of the login process where end user trust is paramount. Google issued the following statement to us today: "These are not our ads and we are currently working with the wireless carrier to understand why this happened." Google confirms that the "SMS AD" did not originate from its own advertising network. Meanwhile, it's working with the wireless carrier in question to find out what occurred. Lacy has decided "not to state the carrier for privacy reasons," and Google did not share that information either.

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