INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Mobile Technology
How cybercriminals are hiding
in your phone
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Malware in the official Google store never stops
appearing; it is a huge victory for cybercriminals to
sneak their malicious applications into the marketplace
of genuine apps. Denise Giusto Bilić, Security
Researcher at ESET, which operates in the Middle
East, summarises some of the common behaviours of
malicious Android code over the last few years.
W
hile analysts figure out new
methodologies for analysing
malware and users begin to
understand how all this works, cybercriminals
are seeking new ways to hide in phones
and compromise devices. The convoluted
tricks used to increase the effectiveness
of their attacks can be grouped into
two distinct categories. The first is social
engineering strategies that seek to
confuse users and second is sophisticated
technical mechanisms that try to obstruct
malware detection and analysis. This
article summarises some of the common
behaviours of malicious Android code over
the last few years.
www.intelligentcio.com
DECEIT BASED ON
SOCIAL ENGINEERING
Use fraudulent accounts in the Google
Play Store to distribute malware
Malware in the official Google store
never stops appearing. For cybercriminals,
sneaking their malicious applications into
the marketplace of genuine apps is a
huge victory as they can reach many more
potential victims, thus having an almost
rock-solid guarantee of more infections.
What’s more, the fake developer accounts
used to spread insecure or malicious apps try
to look as similar as possible to real accounts
in order to dupe unsuspecting users who end
up getting confused by them.
In a recent example of this, researchers
discovered a fake app for updating
WhatsApp that used a Unicode character
trick to give the impression of being
distributed through the official account.
Take advantage of
commemorative dates and
scheduled app release dates
A common practice in the world of
cybercrime is to make malware look like
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