“Scams Have Become Industrialized”: Bitdefender’s Botezatu on Operation Roadtrap

A global smishing campaign using fake toll-road, parking and traffic-fine messages is exposing the industrial scale of modern mobile fraud. Researchers uncovered more than 79,000 fraudulent SMS messages and over 31,900 malicious URLs targeting users across 12 countries.

In this episode of Perspectives, the podcast exploring mobile technology, security and digital trust, Riccardo Amati speaks with Bogdan Botezatu, Director of Threat Research at Bitdefender, about the company’s Operation Roadtrap investigation.

The conversation explores how cybercriminals are industrializing SMS fraud, why mobile users continue to trust text messages, and why researchers increasingly see smishing as a systemic infrastructure problem rather than a simple scam trend.