RETURN OF HUMMING WHALE TO HIT YOUR PC and Mobile Phone

The HummingBad malware first discovered in February 2016 is making a return visit to the charts. The original was cleaned up, but not before the malware’s authors Yingmob racked up around US$900,000 per month at its peak.

“HummingBad” stands out as an extremely sophisticated and well-developed malware, which employed a chain-attack method and a rootkit to gain full control over the infected device. HummingBad, an Android malware estimated to have touched over 85 million devices worldwide, was recently found in 46 new applications, 20 of which had even made their way into the official Play Store, passing Google's security checks.

In terms of Android malware, HummingBad is the biggest player active today, accounting for 72% of all mobile infections. The group effectively controls an arsenal of over 85 million mobile devices around the world. With the potential to sell access to these devices to the highest bidder. This steady stream of cash, coupled with a focused organizational structure, proves cyber criminals can easily become financially self-sufficient.

This new malware was also heavily packed and contained its main payload in the ‘group.png’ file, which is, in fact, an apk, meaning they can be run as executables. These Malware can run commands and download, upload, or delete files. Once infected device fully compromised.

The mobile malware that is in-use by state or state-sponsored and a new malware family, called LeifAccess or Shopper, takes advantage of the accessibility features in Android to create accounts, download apps, and post reviews.

The modified version attempts to change the recovery email for the account configured in mobile device, and then trigger a password recovery event and take over the legitimate accounts. From military information, to corporate intelligence, to personal behavior, these malwares are engaged to steal it, aggregate it, and use it.

This is a new atack method. Instead of building a fake app and pushing it up the ranking with fake reviews, these criminals went aer the account of a legimate developer of a popular app with a solid reputaon. Recently traced two variants of this app reported more than 100,000 and 500,000 installs during the period of COVID 19.

An autonomous comprehensive security app is need of the hour as a defensive measure to protect your data and privacy from cyberthreats. Says the report from bemobile.

Time has again laydown a new foundation for an innovation. A single app to shield your smartphone from all kind of cyber threats. The need has shown the way forward towards development of and industry-leading threat detection and prevention app, which is a unique system solution and threat defense mechanism that runs in the background to cyber incident on modern and legacy smartphones.