- USDOT Sums Up A Remarkable Four Years In Department History
- Toll Collection Scam's Recent Surge Traced To Marketing Of Phishing Kits
- These are just some of the toll industry developments TRN is following.
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USDOT Sums Up A Remarkable Four Years In Department History
Yesterday, USDOT issued a sweeping, 6,700-word news release summarizing its accomplishments under the administration of President Joe Biden and Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
As might be expected, the multimodal system improvements set in motion by signature Biden era legislation such as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) get top billing. More than 40 new programs, the department notes, “allowed for the tens of thousands of projects now taking shape in communities across America,” most of which will be completed after Biden leaves office on Monday. Those projects “are fueling the growth of good-paying skilled trade jobs, spurring long-needed modernization in communities of all sizes, including rural and Tribal regions, and giving states and cities the ability to carry out projects that had been on the backburner for years or even decades due to a lack of funding,” USDOT states.
Transportation safety and new consumer protections for airline passengers are also prominently spotlighted in the news release. Overviews of improvements in supply chain logistics and infrastructure sustainability against climate change, as well as research and innovation accomplishments, are also provided. USDOT notes that two broad goals of Secretary Buttigieg figured in all the initiatives highlighted: “connecting people to opportunity through transportation investments,” and ensuring that all modes of transportation modes are affordable and accessible to the people who depend on them.
Reflections on Buttigieg’s leadership and accomplishments are also the subject of a Transport Topics article.
Highway-Tunnel-Bridge Maintenance Highway-Tunnel-Bridge Safety (Includes COVID-19 Impacts) US Department of Transportation (USDOT) US Gov't Transportation Funding US Infrastructure Funding And Financing InitiativesToll Collection Scam's Recent Surge Traced To Marketing Of Phishing Kits
Krebs on Security, a blog maintained by cybersecurity and cybercrime analyst Brian Krebs, confirms that mobile phone users across the US “are being inundated” with messages from smishing scammers posing as toll road entities, and the volume of illicit messages has increased considerably since the start of the year.
Krebs reports that researchers have traced the surge of activity to “new features added to a popular commercial phishing kit sold in China that makes it simple to set up convincing lures spoofing toll road operators in multiple U.S. states.” Phishing kit marketing has previously been associated with upsurges of cybercriminal activity. (Because the kits come with malicious code and deceptive email and web page templates, they are attractive to criminals who lack computing know-how.)
Some of the blog’s other insights into the current scam include:
- Victims “are asked to provide payment card data, and eventually will be asked to supply a one-time password sent via SMS or a mobile authentication app.”
- The primary goal of criminals who use a phishing kit is to obtain payment card information that “can be added to mobile wallets and used to buy goods at physical stores, online, or to launder money through shell companies.”
- A toll collection scam web page will not even load unless it’s detected that the page request is coming from a mobile device.
These are just some of the toll industry developments TRN is following.
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