Newly discovered Android malware able to steal money from online banking account

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New Android malware was discovered, able to steal money from online banking accounts, and hide SMS notifications coming to confirm financial transactions.

This new malware detected by Dr.Web as the Android.SmsBot.459.origin trojan infects users via SMS spam, which, to be more convincing, in some cases even uses the phone owner's name. The spam SMS message contains a link, which, if opened, will forcibly download the trojan's APK file on the user's device.

The only way to actually get infected is to tap and open the APK file, so if a Web page just downloads an Android app on your phone without asking you anything, don't even think of opening it. Ever!

The trojan masquerades as a legitimate app

For users who are so "unlucky" to tap and open the APK, the trojan will mask itself as an app coming from a well-known source, in this case, as a client application for an advertising website in Russia.

If the user agrees to install it, the app will immediately ask for admin privileges with the purpose of "getting video codec access." This message is quite pushy and won't go away until the user clicks "Activate." As a side note to the article, popups that cannot be closed should be another sign that an app contains malware.

Once successfully installed and with admin privileges, the trojan now starts operating with its C&C server. The first thing it will do is to send all kinds of details about the user's phone, beginning with its IMEI, model name, system language, mobile phone number, OS version, and so on.

The malware currently targets Russian users

Once this data is on the C&C server, the Android.SmsBot.459.origin trojan is then instructed to scan the device for a list of banking applications. For now, this trojan only scans for applications catering to Russian banks.

If banking applications are found, using pre-configured operations, the trojan will get the user's account balance, trying to discover if they have any available funds.