banking Trojan | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The threat actors behind the Windows-based  Grandoreiro  banking trojan have returned in a global campaign since March 2024 following a law enforcement takedown in January. The large-scale phishing attacks, likely facilitated by other cybercriminals via a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) model, target over 1,500 banks across the world, spanning more than 60 countries in Central and South America, Africa, Europe, and the Indo-Pacific, IBM X-Force said. While  Grandoreiro  is known primarily for its focus in Latin America, Spain, and Portugal, the expansion is likely a shift in strategy after attempts to  shut down its infrastructure  by Brazilian authorities. Going hand-in-hand with the broader targeting footprint are significant improvements to the malware itself, which indicates active development. "Analysis of the malware revealed major updates within the string decryption and domain generating algorithm (DGA), as well as the ability to use Mic...

Google is unveiling a set of new features in Android 15 to prevent malicious apps installed on the device from capturing sensitive data. This constitutes an update to the  Play Integrity API  that third-party app developers can take advantage of to secure their applications against malware. "Developers can check if there are other apps running that could be capturing the screen, creating overlays, or controlling the device," Dave Kleidermacher, vice president of engineering for Android security and privacy,  said . "This is helpful for apps that want to hide sensitive information from other apps and protect users from scams." Additionally, the Play Integrity API can be used to check if  Google Play Protect  is active and if the user's device is free of known malware before performing sensitive actions or handling sensitive data. Google, with Android 13, introduced a feature called  restricted settings  that by default blocks sideloaded apps from...

Intro: Why hack in when you can log in? SaaS applications are the backbone of modern organizations, powering productivity and operational efficiency. But every new app introduces critical security risks through app integrations and multiple users, creating easy access points for threat actors. As a result, SaaS breaches have increased, and according to a May 2024 XM Cyber report, identity and credential misconfigurations caused 80% of security exposures. Subtle signs of a compromise get lost in the noise, and then multi-stage attacks unfold undetected due to siloed solutions. Think of an account takeover in Entra ID, then privilege escalation in GitHub, along with data exfiltration from Slack. Each seems unrelated when viewed in isolation, but in a connected timeline of events, it's a dangerous breach. Wing Security's SaaS platform is a multi-layered solution that combines posture management with real-time identity threat detection and response. This allows organizations to get a ...

Malicious Android apps masquerading as Google, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and X (formerly Twitter) have been observed to steal users' credentials from compromised devices. "This malware uses famous Android app icons to mislead users and trick victims into installing the malicious app on their devices," the SonicWall Capture Labs threat research team  said  in a recent report. The distribution vector for the campaign is currently unclear. However, once the app is installed on the users' phones, it requests them to grant it permissions to the accessibility services and the  device administrator API , a now-deprecated feature that provides device administration features at the system level. Obtaining these permissions allows the rogue app to gain control over the device, making it possible to carry out arbitrary actions ranging from data theft to malware deployment without the victims' knowledge. The malware is designed to establish connections with a comman...

Fake browser updates are being used to push a previously undocumented Android malware called  Brokewell . "Brokewell is a typical modern banking malware equipped with both data-stealing and remote-control capabilities built into the malware," Dutch security firm ThreatFabric  said  in an analysis published Thursday. The malware is said to be in active development, adding new commands to capture touch events, textual information displayed on screen, and the applications a victim launches. The list of Brokewell apps that masquerade as Google Chrome, ID Austria, and Klarna is as follows - jcwAz.EpLIq.vcAZiUGZpK (Google Chrome) zRFxj.ieubP.lWZzwlluca (ID Austria) com.brkwl.upstracking (Klarna) Like other recent Android malware families of its kind, Brokewell is capable of getting around restrictions imposed by Google that prevent sideloaded apps from requesting  accessibility service permissions . The ban...

A new Android trojan called  SoumniBot  has been detected in the wild targeting users in South Korea by leveraging weaknesses in the manifest extraction and parsing procedure. The malware is "notable for an unconventional approach to evading analysis and detection, namely obfuscation of the Android manifest," Kaspersky researcher Dmitry Kalinin  said  in a technical analysis. Every Android app comes with a  manifest XML file  ("AndroidManifest.xml") that's located in the root directory and declares the various components of the app, as well as the permissions and the hardware and software features it requires. Knowing that threat hunters typically commence their analysis by inspecting the app's manifest file to determine its behavior, the threat actors behind the malware have been found to leverage three different techniques to make the process a lot more challenging. The first method involves the use of an invalid Compression method value when unpacki...

The Android banking trojan known as Vultur has resurfaced with a suite of new features and improved anti-analysis and detection evasion techniques, enabling its operators to remotely interact with a mobile device and harvest sensitive data. "Vultur has also started masquerading more of its malicious activity by encrypting its C2 communication, using multiple encrypted payloads that are decrypted on the fly, and using the guise of legitimate applications to carry out its malicious actions," NCC Group researcher Joshua Kamp  said  in a report published last week. Vultur was  first disclosed  in early 2021, with the malware capable of leveraging Android's accessibility services APIs to execute its malicious actions. The malware has been observed to be  distributed via trojanized dropper apps  on the Google Play Store, masquerading as authenticator and productivity apps to trick unwitting users into installing them. These dropper apps are offered as part of...

The threat actors behind the PixPirate Android banking trojan are leveraging a new trick to evade detection on compromised devices and harvest sensitive information from users in Brazil. The approach allows it to hide the malicious app's icon from the home screen of the victim's device, IBM said in a technical report published today. "Thanks to this new technique, during PixPirate reconnaissance and attack phases, the victim remains oblivious to the malicious operations that this malware performs in the background," security researcher Nir Somech  said . PixPirate, which was  first documented  by Cleafy in February 2023, is known for its abuse of Android's accessibility services to covertly perform unauthorized fund transfers using the PIX instant payment platform when a targeted banking app is opened. The constantly mutating malware is also capable of stealing victims' online banking credentials and credit card information, as well as capturing keystrokes and interc...

Cybersecurity researchers are warning about a spike in email phishing campaigns that are weaponizing the Google Cloud Run service to deliver various banking trojans such as  Astaroth  (aka Guildma),  Mekotio , and  Ousaban  (aka Javali) to targets across Latin America (LATAM) and Europe. "The infection chains associated with these malware families feature the use of malicious Microsoft Installers (MSIs) that function as droppers or downloaders for the final malware payload(s)," Cisco Talos researchers  disclosed  last week. The high-volume malware distribution campaigns, observed since September 2023, have employed the same storage bucket within Google Cloud for propagation, suggesting potential links between the threat actors behind the distribution campaigns. Google Cloud Run is a  managed compute platform  that enables users to run frontend and backend services, batch jobs, deploy websites and applications, and queue processing workloa...

A Chinese-speaking threat actor codenamed  GoldFactory  has been attributed to the development of highly sophisticated banking trojans, including a previously undocumented iOS malware called GoldPickaxe that's capable of harvesting identity documents, facial recognition data, and intercepting SMS. "The GoldPickaxe family is available for both iOS and Android platforms," Singapore-headquartered Group-IB  said  in an extensive report shared with The Hacker News. "GoldFactory is believed to be a well-organized Chinese-speaking cybercrime group with close connections to  Gigabud ." Active since at least mid-2023, GoldFactory is also responsible for another Android-based banking malware called  GoldDigger  and its enhanced variant GoldDiggerPlus as well as GoldKefu, an embedded trojan inside GoldDiggerPlus. Social engineering campaigns distributing the malware have been found to target the Asia-Pacific region, specifically Thailand and Vietnam, by masqu...

Sixty-one banking institutions, all of them originating from Brazil, are the target of a new banking trojan called  Coyote . "This malware utilizes the Squirrel installer for distribution, leveraging Node.js and a relatively new multi-platform programming language called Nim as a loader to complete its infection," Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky  said  in a Thursday report. What makes Coyote a different breed from  other banking trojans  of its kind is the use of the open-source  Squirrel framework  for installing and updating Windows apps. Another notable departure is the shift from Delphi – which is prevalent among banking malware families targeting Latin America – to an uncommon programming language like Nim. In the attack chain documented by Kaspersky, a Squirrel installer executable is used as a launchpad for a Node.js application compiled with Electron, which, in turn, runs a Nim-based loader to trigger the execution of the malicious Co...

The threat actors behind the Mispadu banking Trojan have become the latest to exploit a now-patched Windows SmartScreen security bypass flaw to compromise users in Mexico. The attacks entail a new variant of the malware that was first observed in 2019, Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said in a report published last week. Propagated via phishing mails, Mispadu is a Delphi-based information stealer known to specifically infect victims in the Latin American (LATAM) region. In March 2023, Metabase Q  revealed  that Mispadu spam campaigns harvested no less than 90,000 bank account credentials since August 2022. It's also part of the larger family of LATAM banking malware, including  Grandoreiro , which was dismantled by Brazilian law enforcement authorities last week. The latest infection chain identified by Unit 42 employs rogue internet shortcut files contained within bogus ZIP archive files that leverage CVE-2023-36025 (CVSS score: 8.8), a high-severity bypass flaw in Wi...

A Brazilian law enforcement operation has led to the arrest of several Brazilian operators in charge of the  Grandoreiro  malware. The Federal Police of Brazil  said  it served five temporary arrest warrants and 13 search and seizure warrants in the states of São Paulo, Santa Catarina, Pará, Goiás, and Mato Grosso. Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET, which provided additional assistance in the effort, said it uncovered a design flaw in Grandoreiro's network protocol that helped it to identify the victimology patterns. Grandoreiro  is one of the many Latin American banking trojans such as Javali, Melcoz, Casabeniero, Mekotio, and Vadokrist, primarily targeting countries like Spain, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. It's known to be active since 2017. In late October 2023, Proofpoint  revealed  details of a phishing campaign that distributed an updated version of the malware to targets in Mexico and Spain. The banking trojan has capabilities to both stea...

40-year-old Russian national Vladimir Dunaev has been sentenced to five years and four months in prison for his role in creating and distributing the TrickBot malware, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said. The development comes nearly two months after  Dunaev pleaded guilty  to committing computer fraud and identity theft and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud. "Hospitals, schools, and businesses were among the millions of TrickBot victims who suffered tens of millions of dollars in losses," DoJ  said . "While active, TrickBot malware, which acted as an initial intrusion vector into victim computer systems, was used to support various ransomware variants." Originating as a banking trojan in 2016, TrickBot evolved into a Swiss Army knife capable of delivering additional payloads, including ransomware. Following efforts to take down the botnet, it was absorbed into the Conti ransomware operation in 2022. The cybercrime crew's allegiance to ...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered an updated version of an Android banking malware called Chameleon that has expanded its targeting to include users in the U.K. and Italy. "Representing a restructured and enhanced iteration of its predecessor, this evolved Chameleon variant excels in executing Device Takeover (DTO) using the accessibility service, all while expanding its targeted region," Dutch mobile security firm ThreatFabric  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. Chameleon was  previously documented  by Cyble in April 2023, noting that it had been used to single out users in Australia and Poland since at least January. Like other banking malware, it's known to abuse its permissions to Android's accessibility service to harvest sensitive data and conduct overlay attacks. The rogue apps containing the earlier version were hosted on phishing pages and found to impersonate genuine institutions in the countries, such as the Australian Taxation Offi...