The Hacker News reports that toll fraud malware apps on Android have been evolving to include mechanisms to enable multi-step attacks while better evading security system detection.
Toll fraud malware apps, which unknowingly subscribe victims to premium subscriptions, have been leveraging cellular connections despite Wi-Fi availability, a report from the Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team revealed.
"Once the connection to a target network is confirmed, it stealthily initiates a fraudulent subscription and confirms it without the user's consent, in some cases even intercepting the one-time password (OTP) to do so," wrote researchers Sang Shin Jung and Dimitrios Valsamaras.
The report also emphasized that the subscription process is not perceivable to victims.
"The malware will communicate with a [command-and-control] server to retrieve a list of offered services," added researchers.
Users have been urged to only install apps from trusted sources, including the Google Play Store, limit app permissions, and consider device upgrades upon the end of software updates to prevent toll fraud malware attacks.
Kaspersky tells SC Media that the cybersecurity firm is unaware of victims outside the company and is not attributing the activity to a government or other actor.
Officials, journalists, and activists across Armenia were reported by Access Now, Citizen Lab, Amnesty International, CyberHUB-AM, and independent researcher Ruben Muradyan to have been targeted in at least 12 instances with the NSO Group's Pegasus spyware, Reuters reports.
Intellexa's commercial Predator spyware, which has been used in surveillance operations targeted at European politicians, Meta executives, and journalists, has been deploying its Alien loader to the 'zygote64' Android process to enable more spyware components, according to BleepingComputer.