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This Android malware records your screen — what you can do

This Android malware records your screen — what you tin do

Green skull on smartphone screen.
(Image credit: Shutterstock)

A nasty Android Trojan targeting banking, social-media and cryptocurrency apps steals your information the one-time-fashioned way: It records everything happening on your phone's screen.

The malware, dubbed "Vultur" past researchers at Amsterdam-based information-security firm ThreatFabric, targets the apps of banks in Commonwealth of australia, Italy, Kingdom of spain, the Netherlands and the U.K.; social-media apps including Facebook, WhatsApp and TikTok; and cryptocurrency apps from Binance, Coinbase and others.

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Vultur is installed on Android phones by a "dropper" called Brunhilda, which is present in several fitness, phone-security and authentication apps, some of which have been found in the Google Play store. The infected apps piece of work as the user expects, but behind the scenes, Brunhilda reaches out to malware servers and downloads Vultur (or other malware).

One infected app called Protection Baby-sit had more than than v,000 installations earlier it was removed from Google Play. ThreatFabric estimates that 30,000 phones may have been infected by Brunhilda. Regarding Vultur specifically, ThreatFabric'southward written report said "we estimate the number of potential victims to be in the thousands."

(In January 2022, Vultur appeared again — read here for more.)

Most Android banking Trojans steal user login credentials past creating "overlays," fake login screens that look like they belong to widely used online-banking apps. Merely Vultur takes another arroyo: It uses remote-access technology to only record everything the possessor of an infected telephone does when sure apps are existence used. It also uses a keylogger to capture user inputs that aren't visible on screen.

The recordings are transmitted to servers run by the criminals operating Vultur, who then tin play back screen recordings of unwitting victims logging into and using Facebook, accessing their bank accounts or making cryptocurrency trades. Combined with the keylogging data, this gives the criminals a walk-through of each potential victims going about routine business organization.

Vultur does all this by abusing Accessibility Services, a function in Android that'due south meant to aid users with visual or auditory impairments, or users who may non be able to meet the screen. For case, Accessibility Services lets ane app read out what's on some other app's screen.

But because information technology gives apps unusual access to one another, far beyond what'due south normally permitted past Android, Accessibility Services is oftentimes abused past information-stealing malware. Vultur even uses the function to hijack the screen if the user tries to delete the infected app — it immediately presses the Back push button.

Users can cease Vultur (and many other banking Trojans) dead in its tracks by denying the infected app permission to use Accessibility Services. As Vultur often arrives in the form of an app that really doesn't need Accessibility Services, this shouldn't always be difficult to detect.

You can also detect Vulture, ThreatFabric says, considering when it's transmitting data to its command-and-command server, the agile "casting" icon will bear witness upward in the Android notifications. If yous're not casting something and the icon shows upward anyway, that'southward reason to worry.

Some other manner is to install and apply one of the best Android antivirus apps. Brunhilda is a known threat, and most antivirus apps will detect it right away; Vultur should be added to the list shortly if it isn't in that location already.

Paul Wagenseil is a senior editor at Tom's Guide focused on security and privacy. He has besides been a dishwasher, fry melt, long-haul driver, code monkey and video editor. He's been rooting around in the information-security space for more than 15 years at FoxNews.com, SecurityNewsDaily, TechNewsDaily and Tom's Guide, has presented talks at the ShmooCon, DerbyCon and BSides Las Vegas hacker conferences, shown upward in random Telly news spots and even moderated a panel discussion at the CEDIA home-technology conference. You can follow his rants on Twitter at @snd_wagenseil.

Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/vultur-android-banking-trojan

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