Every time we can do more things with mobile in Europe we have more and more personal information and become an attractive target for cyber attackers. Although in recent years, more secure systems are still not entirely foolproof and we may still fall, like this new scam that could come to you through WhatsApp.
This WhatsApp message takes you to fake Google Play and installs virus
A few hours ago, an ESET researcher published a new attack campaign via WhatsApp. It is a malicious application that stands out in that, once it takes control of your mobile, it is able to send itself to your WhatsApp contacts, which is very rare.
The attack itself takes advantage of our ability to accept the weakness of the human being to click and accept whatever is put in front of us. The link sent by WhatsApp is similar to the URL that would have the link of a Google Play app, but it is a fake link that takes us to an app store. Again, a fake copy of Google Play where one press of install downloads a fake APK from Huawei.
Despite the fact that the fraudulent application has a lot of power on our mobile, it uses permissions that we have granted ourselves.
Once this file is downloaded, it will manually ask us to grant it permission to show up on other apps, ignore battery optimizations, and allow the app to access our notifications. Without realizing it, we have given a lot of power to this application so that it can do what it wants on our mobile.
ESET warns that the fraudulent application, once it takes control of our mobile, is able to replicate itself, sending said message to our contacts through WhatsApp, the only application through which it sends said message. However, the app would be ready to send this message through other messaging apps like Telegram as well.
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