Smooth-talking fraudsters clone contactless cards, authorize payments in just 13 minutes
REG AD googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('labrador/thereg/article/desktop/b'); }); While still on the phone, the attacker gets the target to install a version of SpyNote on their Android device. The file name includes the target's name, which the researchers said could suggest that each target is singled out specifically, and a degree of reconnaissance has to be carried out prior to the attack. REG AD googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('labrador/thereg/article/desktop/c'); }); Once installed, the attacker quickly uses the RAT's remote access to quietly install WindRelay on the attacker's device without their knowledge or input, all while the call was ongoing.
- ▪REG AD googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('labrador/thereg/article/desktop/b'); }); While still on the phone, the attacker gets the target to install a version of SpyNote on their Android device.
- ▪The file name includes the target's name, which the researchers said could suggest that each target is singled out specifically, and a degree of reconnaissance has to be carried out prior to the attack.
- ▪REG AD googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('labrador/thereg/article/desktop/c'); }); Once installed, the attacker quickly uses the RAT's remote access to quietly install WindRelay on the attacker's device without their knowled
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Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | The Register |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theregister.com/cyber-crime/2026/08/12/smooth-talking-fraudsters-clone-contactless-cards-authorize-payments-in-just-13-minutes/5286808 |
| Publication time | Wed, 12 Aug 2026 17:05:00 +0200 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-08-12T15:06:31.592Z |
| Last seen | 2026-08-12T15:06:31.592Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | TZEFfMJZ3mg2 · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
(function() { let windowUrl = window.location.href; windowUrl = windowUrl.substring(windowUrl.indexOf('?') + 1); let messageElement = document.querySelector('.shareableMessage'); if (windowUrl && windowUrl.includes('code') && windowUrl.includes('expires')) { messageElement.style.display = 'block'; } })(); cyber-crime Smooth-talking fraudsters clone contactless cards, authorize payments in just 13 minutes Social engineering and malware combine to enable financial fraud before banks have time to act Connor Jones Connor Jones Cybersecurity reporter Published wed 12 Aug 2026 // 16:05 UTC A new social engineering and malware campaign targets Android users, stealing card details to make payments or withdraw cash.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The Register.
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