Wash,

I have a suspicion they have insider help and / or knowledge.

Regards,

Alex

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 5:38 PM Odhiambo Washington via KICTANet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

At the risk of being called naive (because I haven't done deeper research on how the alleged $subject is achieved), I'd like to know if there is someone else who thinks like me - that there is a problem at Airtel.

I happen to have an Airtel phone number that I believe is perhaps one of the easiest to pick from a random pool (?) - 0732000004 (should I care about privacy?).

In a week, I get at least 5 calls from the Mulot ICT Hub guys who are intent on either wiping clean my non-existent Airtel Money balance or they just want to take away my number (even though it's duly registered).

I love playing games with these Mulot guys, but one thing has always gotten me intrigued: How they are able to generate OTPs instantly - from the Airtel systems, or some systems mimicking Airtel systems.

All the OTPs they send to me in the process of trying to achieve their objectives (whatever it is), do come from (I believe) Airtel Systems - because on my phone, they are threaded together with messages that I

do receive from Airtel. 

And my question then is - how is that possible without them having access to the Airtel system (that generates the OTP) either via a compromise or a deliberately provided backdoor (by an insider collaborator)?

And what can I do to mitigate this?

The best Airtel has always done is to send me an SMS advising that I should not share my details with anyone, even an Airtel employee and that official calls from Airtel can only originate from a specific number.

--

Best regards,
Odhiambo WASHINGTON,
Nairobi,KE
+254 7 3200 0004/+254 7 2274 3223
"Oh, the cruft.", egrep -v '^$|^.*#' ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :-)

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