The malware that infected especially old phones is very cunning. It can sense the moment when it is left on hold for a long time (usually at night) and makes paid international calls. This way, he avoids being caught by the phone’s owner, who could see that his phone is ringing on its own. However, you may think: hello, hello, he will see it in the call history in the morning. Well, no. These software are so clever that they can remove it from your registry. You can only find out about their existence from the billing, but then it is usually too late to avoid the fees. We are talking about even four-digit amounts here.
Phones with old Android make calls abroad on their own
Fraudsters consciously choose calls for which the phone owner has to pay a lot. What benefit do they get from this? Well, they can do it in two ways. Firstly, the fraudster may own the numbers that unaware victims call and have an agreement with the operator that they share a percentage of the profits. In the second option, they find a small operator who is fully aware of what is happening and simply uses it himself.
We know about this procedure, among others: thanks to Orange, which received an infected phone from one of its customers. However, this has allowed them to issue a detailed warning to those who are most vulnerable to such scams. “Among the devices in the Orange Polska network that tried to establish contact with the botnet’s C&C servers (obviously blocked by CyberShield), the operating system versions ranged from Android 4.4 to 8.1. These are systems that were released in 2014 and 2017,” we read. Typically, such phones had one or two large ones.
Which phones and apps are at risk?
The list of applications published by Orange that tried to carry out such an attack includes, among others: Core, Mini World or LEAGOO Share systems. As for the list of phones, the attacked devices included: Alba Alba 6, Xiaomi Redmi Note 3, Kruger_Matz MOVE_6_mini, and myPhone Pocket_2. The full list is available on the Orange website [].
Source: Gazeta
Mabel is a talented author and journalist with a passion for all things technology. As an experienced writer for the 247 News Agency, she has established a reputation for her in-depth reporting and expert analysis on the latest developments in the tech industry.
