Russian Hacker Arrested For Stealing $8000 Per Day Via Mobile Malware
Law enforcement, with support from Group-IB, has arrested a 32-year-old hacker, accused of stealing funds from Russian banks’ customers using Android mobile malware.
At the height of their activity, victims reportedly lost between 1,500 to 8,000 dollars daily and levered cryptocurrency for laundering.
Group-IB’s analysis reviewed the tools and techniques leveraged in the group’s attack revealing that the gang tricked customers of Russian banks into downloading malicious mobile applications “Banks at your fingertips”. The app claimed to be an aggregator of the country’s leading mobile banking systems and promised users a ‘one-click’ access to all bank cards to view balances, transfer money from card to card, and pay for online services. The app was first discovered in 2016 and was distributed through spam emails.
The criminal group’s approach was rather elementary: customers of banks downloaded the fake mobile app and entered their card details. The Trojan then sent bank card data or online banking credentials to the C&C server. Following this, the threat actor transferred 200-500 dollars at a time to previously activated bank accounts, and bypassed SMS confirmation codes which were intercepted from the victim’s phone. The victims were not aware of the transactions as all SMS confirmations of transactions were blocked.
Further details on this story here
Duncan is a technology professional with over 20 years experience of working in various IT roles. He has a interest in cyber security, and has a wide range of other skills in radio, electronics and telecommunications.