Android Malware Campaign Leverages Money-Lending Apps to Blackmail Victims

A previously undocumented Android malware campaign has been observed leveraging money-lending apps to blackmail victims into paying up with personal information stolen from their devices.

Mobile security company Zimperium dubbed the activity MoneyMonger, pointing out the use of the cross-platform Flutter framework to develop the apps.

MoneyMonger “takes advantage of Flutter’s framework to obfuscate malicious features and complicate the detection of malicious activity by static analysis,” Zimperium researchers Fernando Sanchez, Alex Calleja , Matteo Favaro, and Gianluca Braga said in a report shared with The Hacker news.

“Due to the nature of Flutter, the malicious code and activity now hide behind a framework outside the static analysis capabilities of legacy mobile security products.”

The campaign, believed to be active since May 2022, is part of a broader effort previously disclosed by Indian cybersecurity firm K7 Security Labs.

images from Hacker News