Finance

Beware of new virus that steals banking details, NCC alerts Nigerians

The Nigerian Communications Commission has alerted millions of Nigerian telecom consumers of the existence of new, high-risk, and extremely damaging, Malware called Flubot.

The commission warns that the virus steals banking details from devices.

This was contained in a press statement by the commission titled, ‘NCC alerts telecom consumers on Flubot Malware… Lists measures to guard against attack.”

NCC noted that according to the information received from the Nigeria Computer Emergency Response Team, Flubot “targets Androids with fake security updates and App installations”.

How the virus works

The statement quoted ngCERT as affirming that Flubot “impersonates Android mobile banking applications to draw fake web view on targeted applications and its goal transcends stealing personal data and essentially targets stealing of credit card details or online banking credentials.

“FluBot is circulated through Short Message Service and can snoop “on incoming notifications, initiate calls, read or write SMS, and transmit the victim’s contact list to its control centre.”

pretending to be “FedEx, DHL, Correos, and Chrome applications” and compels unsuspecting users to alter the accessibility configurations on their devices in order to maintain a continuous presence on devices.

“The new malware undermines the security of devices by copying fake login screens of prominent banks, and the moment the users enter their login details on the fake pages, their data is harvested and transmitted to the malware operators’ control point from where the data is exploited by intercepting banking-related One Time Passwords and replacing the default SMS app on the targeted Android device.

“Consequently, it secures admittance into the device through SMS and proceeds to transmit similar messages to other contacts that may be on the device it has attacked enticing them into downloading the fake app.

“It suffices to say that, when Flubot infects a device, it can result in incalculable financial losses. Additionally, the malware creates a backdoor which grants access to the user’s device, thus enabling the invader or attacker to perform other criminal actions, including launching other variants of malware