these 3 French applications are in the top 10 of victims!
When you’re a pirate, you try to do things big! If we’re going to fly, we might as well do it on a grand scale. All systems are good, from texting to phishing to credential theft. Flubot, Xenomorph, Sharkbot… we often warn you in our columns against these malware with frightening names. However, the important thing is never the shape, but always the substance… of your wallet! And to succeed in their coup, the hackers have privileged targets, some of which are tricolor.
Flag down!
Zimperiumthe mobile security platform for enterprise environments, has indeed published a report in which it makes the list of Android applications most targeted by the 10 most effective trojans of the moment. The company has focused on financial applications around the world, whether payment, investment, banking or cryptocurrency-related services. Remember that “trojan” is the English word for a Trojan horse: malware that will infiltrate your smartphone as was done in ancient Greece.
Our new report Mobile Banking Heists: The Global Economic Threat, reviews 10 prolific mobile banking trojans and over 600 global financial institution apps targeted every day by digital bank robbers. Get your copy today. #mobilebankheist #wesecuremobile https://t.co/jft8FFJo79
—Zimperium (@Zimperium) June 9, 2022
At the top of the list we find PhonePe, the Indian payment and money transfer application with 100 million downloads. Behind her, Binance and Cash App with their 50 million copies. As a result, we are surprised to see that it is indeed three French applications that invite themselves into this dismal top. La Banque Postale, Ma Banque and Caf-Mon Compte are there, proud of their 10 million downloads each. So we don’t really know what the Family Allowance Fund program is doing in the list, but we have to believe that the data that can be recovered there and its wide distribution make it a target of choice. For identity theft? Benefit fraud? This trio shows how much fun hackers find by throwing malware head-on to attack you.
A little tea with your empty account?
The most widespread trojan in France is called teabot. He previously rose to prominence as Anatsa and Toddler and underwent a minor ‘rebranding’ in 2021. He first took on Italy attacking over 60 banks before expanding his web to more than 400 around the world. This malware stands out from others by using, for example, the keylogger technique that records live what you type on your login screen. The hacker can therefore have access to your codes. It can also send the collected data to a server every 10 seconds.
The other one that does damage is ExobotCompact. The latter is spread through text messages that make you install fake versions of well-known programs like WhatsApp, Runstatic or Netflix. It then brings up an overlay that takes the appearance of a bank login page in order to save the identifiers that you enter there. This evil malware can even check if an antivirus is present on your device and shut it down without you noticing.
France is not the worst student since it is only ranked 6th in the list of countries that suffer the most attacks. We find in this top:
- United States: 121 applications targeted
- UK: 55
- Italy: 43
- Turkey: 34
- Australia: 33
- France: 31
Next come Spain (29), Portugal (27) and Switzerland (19).
