Skip to main content

Russians were given ways to protect themselves from surveillance via a smartphone


Experts noted that most often smartphone owners are inattentive and infect their devices with spyware. Such programs can collect personal data and place it in the public domain, listen to conversations, and monitor the actions of the owner.

Sergey Nikitin, Deputy of the Group-IB Computer Forensics Laboratory, said that more than 90 percent of cases are not vulnerabilities, but user actions. According to him, the main source of infection is applications downloaded through the browser.

"The search engine, first, gives not an official site, but contextual advertising. Often, scammers buy it, and by clicking on the link from your phone, you download a malicious APK file," said Nikitin.
Nikitin gave an example of the GetContact app, which shows how a person is named in his friends' contact list. According to him, the user provides access to contacts that can leak to the network. He noted that such cases have already occurred. The expert advised not to download applications for remote management, for tracking the user. According to him, it is also not necessary to download the first available antivirus from the search engine, since an unknown program may be a program with a Trojan virus.

Kaspersky Lab expert Viktor Chebyshev also said that popular apps can be malicious. According to him, hackers often fake malicious programs for popular applications. "For example, we recently discovered more than a thousand malware that pretended to be a popular dating application. In General, in 2019, most often Trojans pretended to be photo-processing applications,” informed Chebyshev.

Another loophole for fraudsters is called remote control applications that allow to see the device's screen.

"An attacker can ask you to install the program and then conduct a financial transaction on your behalf. Many banks now show a one-time code in push notifications, so it is not a problem to see it on the screen," said the representative of Group-IB.
Experts also added that fake apps can be found even in official stores. You should be wary if the application requests administrative functions.


source https://www.ehackingnews.com/2020/02/russians-were-given-ways-to-protect.html

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Betting and Gambling Websites under Cyberattack from Chinese Hackers

Since last year's summers, Chinese hackers have been targeting South Asian companies that own online gambling and betting websites. The gambling companies in South Asia have confirmed the hacks, whereas rumors of cyberattacks on betting websites have also emerged from Europe, and the Middle East, however, the rumors are yet to confirm, says the reports of cybersecurity group Trend Micro and Talent-Jump. Cybersecurity experts claim that no money was stolen in these hacks against the gambling websites. However, hackers have stolen source codes and databases. The motive of the attack was not a cybercrime, but rather espionage intended attack to gain intelligence. According to the experts, a group named ' DRBControl ' is responsible for the cyberattack. According to the reports of Trend Micro, the hacking techniques used in this particular cyberattack incident is similar to methods done by Emissary Panda and Winnti. All of these hacking groups are from China that has launc

Information security experts have warned Russians about bonus card fraud schemes.

Fraudsters several thousand times tried to illegally take advantage of discount bonuses of Russians in 2019. Some attackers gained access to customers' personal accounts, and then bought the products using bonuses, said Alexey Sizov, head of the anti-fraud department of the Application Security Systems Center at Jet Infosystems. According to him, a fraudster can register a personal account on a card that was issued to another person. The victim will accumulate points without knowing about the existence of his profile, and the attacker will write off bonuses, said Sizov. The expert added that this is mainly done by novice scammers. According to him, loyalty programs are poorly protected, unlike banking operations. He said that they are estimated at 50 billion rubles ($760 milliard) for the 30 largest retailers. Alexey Fedorov, Chairman of the Business Russia Trade Committee, said that in 2019, the number of bonus and discount thefts "increased significantly."

Provider Volia reported to the cyber police about the intense cyberattacks on the server

Cable provider Volia appealed to the Cyber Police on the fact of fixing a DDoS attack on the Kharkov servers of the company, which has been ongoing since May 31. "For three days, from May 31 to today, the Volia infrastructure in Kharkov is subjected to cyberattacks. At first, they were carried out only on subscriber subsystems, later they switched to telecommunications infrastructure. As a result, more than 100,000 subscribers experienced problems using the Internet, IPTV, multi-screen platform, and digital TV," said the company. In total, the complete lack of access to Volia's services, according to the provider, lasted 12 minutes on May 31, 45 minutes on June 1. There was also an attack on the website volia.com, but it was managed to neutralize. "DDoS attacks were massive and well-organized. The type of attack is UDP flood and channel capacity overflow with the traffic of more than 200 GB. UDP is a protocol used for online streaming services - streaming, te