Security News
Security researchers at McAfee have discovered a set of 16 malicious clicker apps that managed to sneak into Google Play, the official app store for Android. Clicker apps are a special category of adware that loads ads in invisible frames or in the background and clicks them to generate revenue for their operators.
The Iranian threat actor known as Domestic Kitten has been attributed to a new mobile campaign that masquerades as a translation app to distribute an updated variant of an Android malware known as FurBall. "Since June 2021, it has been distributed as a translation app via a copycat of an Iranian website that provides translated articles, journals, and books," ESET researcher Lukas Stefanko said in a report shared with The Hacker News.
A new version of the 'FurBall' Android spyware has been found targeting Iranian citizens in mobile surveillance campaigns conducted by the Domestic Kitten hacking group, also known as APT-C-50. The newest FurBall malware version was sampled and analyzed by ESET researchers, who report it has many similarities with earlier versions, but now comes with obfuscation and C2 updates.
As many as 16 malicious apps with over 20 million cumulative downloads have been taken down from the Google Play Store after they were caught committing mobile ad fraud. The Clicker malware masqueraded as seemingly harmless utilities like cameras, currency/unit converters, QR code readers, note-taking apps, and dictionaries, among others, in a bid to trick users into downloading them, cybersecurity firm McAfee said.
In a bid to prioritize security and privacy, Signal has announced that it will soon phase out SMS and MMS messaging support on Android. Signal now thinks it has reached the point where SMS support for Android users will be expunged to allow them to focus on security and privacy offerings on the Signal platform.
An unofficial version of the popular WhatsApp messaging app called YoWhatsApp has been observed deploying an Android trojan known as Triada. The goal of the malware is to steal the keys that "Allow the use of a WhatsApp account without the app," Kaspersky said in a new report.
A new version of an unofficial WhatsApp Android application named 'YoWhatsApp' has been found stealing access keys for users' accounts. YoWhatsApp is a fully working messenger app that uses the same permissions as the standard WhatsApp app and is promoted through advertisements on popular Android applications like Snaptube and Vidmate.
"We have now reached the point where SMS support no longer makes sense. In order to enable a more streamlined Signal experience, we are starting to phase out SMS support from the Android app," the company said in a blog post published today. Signal will start notifying them to export their SMS messages and switch to a new default app to manage their SMS messages.
Malicious actors are resorting to voice phishing tactics to dupe victims into installing Android malware on their devices, new research from ThreatFabric reveals. Telephone-oriented attack delivery, as the social engineering technique is called, involves calling the victims using previously collected information from fraudulent websites.
Google on Wednesday officially rolled out support for passkeys, the next-generation authentication standard, to both Android and Chrome. "Passkeys are a significantly safer replacement for passwords and other phishable authentication factors," the tech giant said.