Categories: Malware

Sophisticated Spyware Attack on Military Mobile Devices to Record Phone Calls & Take a Picture

A few days before the Israeli security firm reported that Hamas cyber attackers installed a sophisticated spyware in Israeli soldiers Military Mobile Devices to collect various sensitive information such as military data.

Spyware distributed through fake World Cup and online dating apps which were spread through the Google play store as legitimate apps.

Apart from this attacker using various bypass technique to evade the Google play store malware protection using the way attackers hide malicious code within legitimate apps.

Yet, it isn’t the first run through these strategies have been utilized, either against this particular target or other government offices around the globe. In mid-2017, the Viperat spyware focused on Israeli fighters serving around the Gaza strip, utilizing social building methods to take photographs and sound records from their cell phones.

Be that as it may, these instances of reconnaissance don’t just influence militaries and governments but Its an example of how cyber threats are evolving and continue to use mobile as their attack vector.

Spyware Activities on Military Mobile Devices

Infected Spyware can able to perform various malicious activities to steal the sensitive information from compromised military mobile devices.

In this case about 100 Military people fell victim to the attack and malware was then able to carry out a number of malicious activities:

Record the user’s phone calls.
Take a picture when the user receives a call.
Steal the user’s contacts.
Steal the user’s SMS messages.
Steal all images and videos stored on the mobile device and information on where they were taken.
Capture the user’s GPS location.
Take random recordings of the user’s surroundings.
Steal files and photos from the mobile device’s storage.

According to the checkpoint, whether these threats come from non-state actors or cyber-crime gangs, they often use sophisticated techniques and malware to bypass traditional controls to reach their target.