Hundreds of millions of Android users have been warned about a terrifying new threat that strikes when you least expect it. Hackers are taking advantage of the fact that people think their phones are turned off to defraud them.
In actuality, cybercriminals have built a phony black screen to conceal their activities beneath it.
According to reports, they also turn off the lights and turn off notifications from afar so that the victims don’t become suspicious. This means they can go ahead and do whatever they want on your phone without you realizing. The spyware allows them to tap, write, copy, and edit what they see just like if they were holding a phone in their hands.
Even more concerning is that it can track your movements, which can be especially useful for obtaining PINs and passwords. Octo is a type of on-device fraud and banking malware. It has already been spotted in the wild, according to experts.
I’ve always said, Android is more fun than iOS but you’ll never catch me using an android phone as my main phone. The new Octo virus affecting all android phones is a great reason why. iOS supremacy even though I have little to no developer freedom>>>>
— Fahmeed Rokon ▕⃝⃤ (@Fahmeed_Rokon) April 13, 2022
Threat Fabric found it on the dark web, which is home to some of the internet’s most dangerous criminals. Most of them lure individuals into downloading malware by posting bogus warnings about web browsers and Google Play Store updates. Octo was also discovered in an app called Fast Cleaner which had 50,000 downloads. It was removed from the Play Store in February.
It is a form of a malicious trojan known as ExobotCompact, which was active in 2018. “ExobotCompact/Octo has serious capabilities,” Threat Fabric claimed, citing imaginative distribution techniques such as droppers on the official Google Play store and malicious landing pages.
“As a result, clients are very likely to download malware onto their devices, giving the actors direct access to their gadgets and, as a result, to their bank accounts,” it added.