Microsoft and Japan police dismantle scam network behind a billion phishing texts

Microsoft says it helped dismantle an online marketplace that scammers used to send phishing messages around the world. The operation was carried out with Japan's National Police Agency, according to The Verge, and traced the activity back to a marketplace known as YAM Store along with a pair of phishing kits called CoGUI and Iron Man.

The scale described is large. Since January 2026, YAM Store, CoGUI and Iron Man together enabled more than one billion malicious messages, the outlet reported. Those messages targeted over 75,000 organizations worldwide, and more than 750 million of them were aimed at a specific set of recipients.

The messages involved are the kind many people already recognize: texts about a parking ticket that does not exist, or a package delivery that was never attempted. Such phishing campaigns typically rely on getting recipients to click a link and hand over personal or payment details.

The announcement signals that the infrastructure behind at least some of those campaigns has been disrupted, which could mean fewer of the messages reaching phones in the near term. Microsoft framed its work with Japanese authorities as a joint effort against the marketplace and the tooling that powered it.

Neither the full details of the takedown nor any follow-up enforcement actions were included in the outlet's initial report. Readers can find the complete story at The Verge.