Understanding banking Trojan techniques can help detect other activities of financially motivated threat groups.
A new variant of the URSNIF malware, first observed in June 2022, marks an important milestone for the tool. Unlike previous iterations of URSNIF, this new variant, dubbed LDR4, is not a banker, but a generic backdoor (similar to the short-lived SAIGON variant), which may have been purposely built to enable operations like ransomware and data theft extortion. This is a significant shift from the malware’s original purpose to enable banking fraud, but is consistent with the broader threat landscape.
Flubot is an Android based malware that has been distributed in the past 1.5 years in
Europe, Asia and Oceania affecting thousands of devices of mostly unsuspecting victims.
Like the majority of Android banking malware, Flubot abuses Accessibility Permissions and Services
in order to steal the victim’s credentials, by detecting when the official banking application
is open to show a fake web injection, a phishing website similar to the login form of the banking
application. An important part of the popularity of Flubot is due to the distribution
strategy used in its campaigns, since it has been using the infected devices to send
text messages, luring new victims into installing the malware from a fake website.
In this article we detail its development over time and recent developments regarding
its disappearance, including new features and distribution campaigns.