Security News > 2020 > October > Sophisticated Android Ransomware Executes with the Home Button

A fresh variant of a sophisticated Android ransomware known as MalLocker locks up mobile devices - surfacing its ransom note when a user hits the Home button.

MalLocker is different though: It uses the "Call" notification, among several categories of notifications that Android supports, which requires immediate user attention.

It surfaces the typical GUI screen that Android users see after closing an app or when the user presses the Home key to send current activity to the background.

MalLocker's machine-learning module indicates continuous evolution of this Android ransomware family, researchers said.

"We expect it to churn out new variants with even more sophisticated techniques. In fact, recent variants contain code forked from an open-source machine-learning module used by developers to automatically resize and crop images based on screen size, a valuable function given the variety of Android devices."

News URL

https://threatpost.com/android-ransomware-home-button/160001/