Mobile on-device fraud prevalence rising

Mobile malware exploiting the Android operating system to facilitate on-device fraud has risen by over 40% between January and May 2022, according to The Hacker News. The U.S. was among the countries most commonly targeted by mobile malware, while Hydra, Octo, ERMAC, Cerberus, and FluBot, also known as Cabassous, were the most prolific banking trojans during the first five months of the year, a report from ThreatFabric revealed. Researchers also found that the Google Play Store has been littered with new dropper apps posing as utility and productivity apps. Moreover, malware operators have been updating banking trojans, with Octo having improved credential exfiltration capabilities and ERMAC featuring better seed phrase collection from various cryptocurrency apps through Accessibility Service exploits." The openness of Android OS serves both good and bad as malware continues to abuse the legitimate features, whilst upcoming restrictions seem to hardly interfere with the malicious intentions of such apps," said researchers.