Govt warns of new mobile banking virus prowling in Indian cyberspace. Check security advisory here
The Indian federal cyber security agency said in its latest advisory that a new mobile banking ‘Trojan’ virus, SOVA, which can stealthily encrypt an Android phone for ransom and is hard to uninstall is targeting Indian customers. The virus has upgraded to its fifth version after it was first detected in the Indian cyberspace in July, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team or CERT-In, the federal technology arm said, which combats cyber attacks and guards the Internet space against phishing and hacking assaults and similar online attacks.
As per the advisory, “it has been reported to CERT-In that Indian banking customers are being targeted by a new type of mobile banking malware campaign using SOVA Android Trojan. The first version of this malware appeared for sale in underground markets in September 2021 with the ability to harvest user names and passwords via key logging, stealing cookies and adding false overlays to a range of apps.”
Further notifying that SOVA was earlier focusing on countries like the US, Russia and Spain, but in July 2022 it added several other countries, including India, to its list of targets. Notably, the latest version of this malware hides itself within fake Android applications that show up with the logo of a few famous legitimate apps like Chrome, Amazon, NFT (non-fungible token linked to crypto currency) platform to deceive users into installing them, according to news agency PTI report.
“This malware captures the credentials when users log into their net banking apps and…
