Android Trojan hits 140 countries, 10,000 victims through social media hijacking
A new Android Trojan has been identified by cybersecurity firm Zimperium, which released a report on Monday explaining how the malware has been able to hit more than 10,000 victims in 144 countries. The trojan -- named FlyTrap by Zimperium researchers -- has been able to spread through "social media hijacking, third-party app stores, and sideloaded applications" since March.
Zimperium's zLabs mobile threat research teams first identified the malware and figured out that it uses social engineering tricks to compromise Facebook accounts. The malware hijacks social media accounts by infecting Android devices, allowing attackers to collect information from victims like Facebook ID, location, email address and IP address as well as cookies and tokens tied to your Facebook account.
"These hijacked Facebook sessions can be used to spread the malware by abusing the victim's social credibility through personal messaging with links to the Trojan, as well as propagating propaganda or disinformation campaigns using the victim's geolocation details," the Zimperium researchers wrote.
