The advent of mobile banking has made our lives easy, bringing convenience to our fingerprints, but it also has its caveats. Mobile banking brings along several security concerns. Now, a new malware dubbed ‘Snowblind’ is targeting Android users and stealing banking credentials.
It is malware that targets Android devices to steal banking information. Discovered by cybersecurity firm Promon, this malware can steal a person’s banking login details and perform unauthorized transactions.
People usually fall prey to this virus by downloading a malicious app that seems legitimate. The malware repackages an app to avoid detection and misuses accessibility features to steal sensitive information and control the app remotely, said Vidar Krey, VP of engineering at Promon.
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How does Snowblind malware work?
"We believe these types of apps have likely spread outside of the official app stores. This has almost certainly been achieved via social engineering attacks, a still very prevalent and widely reported method of duping less tech-savvy users," Mr Krey told PCMag.
Unlike other Android malware, Snowblind bypasses Android’s built-in security by exploiting a feature called “seccomp” in the Linux Kernel, which is supposed to check for tampering. Snowblind injects code before seccomp activities, enabling it to bypass security checks and use accessibility services to monitor a user’s screen, making it easier for the malware to steal their login information or interrupt their banking app sessions.
This allows the malware to disable biometric and two-factor authentication (2FA) protections, putting users at higher risk and identity theft. The malware works quite in the background, so users might not even realize it is on their device.
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Over 10 Million Devices Were Affected By Data-Stealing Malware
The internet is increasingly becoming an unsafe place, at least that’s what a new report from cybersecurity firm Kaspersky suggests. The report (via The EconomicTimes) claims that the number of devices affected by malware created to steal personal data increased by over 600% in the last three years.
More than 10 million personal and company devices were affected by malware in 2023, a 643% increase during the past three years. And the hackers can steal an average of 50.9 log-in credentials from each infected device. These credentials include log-ins for online banking apps, crypto wallets, social media accounts, and email.
The report further suggested that 443,000 websites across the globe had compromised credentials in the last five years. Out of these websites, the .com domain had the biggest number of compromised accounts at 326 million. Next on the list are 29 million compromised accounts from the Brazil (.br) domain, 8 million accounts compromised with the India (.in) domain, and the 6 million and 5.5 million compromised were related to Colombia (.co), and Vietnam (.vn) domains respectively.
