Group-IB, a leading creator of cybersecurity technologies to investigate, prevent, and fight digital crime, has uncovered a new iOS Trojan designed to steal users’ facial recognition data, identity documents, and intercept SMS. The Trojan, dubbed GoldPickaxe.iOS by Group-IB’s Threat Intelligence unit, has been attributed to a Chinese-speaking threat actor codenamed GoldFactory, responsible for developing a suite of highly sophisticated banking Trojans that also includes the earlier discovered GoldDigger and newly identified GoldDiggerPlus, GoldKefu, and GoldPickaxe for Android. To exploit the stolen biometric data, the threat actor utilizes AI face-swapping services to create deepfakes by replacing their faces with those of the victims. This method could be used by cybercriminals to gain unauthorized access to the victim’s banking account – a new fraud technique, previously unseen by Group-IB researchers. The GoldFactory Trojans target the Asia-Pacific region, specifically — Thailand and Vietnam impersonating local banks and government organizations.
Group-IB’s discovery also marks a rare instance of malware targeting Apple’s mobile operating system. The detailed technical description of the Trojans, analysis of their technical capabilities, and the list of relevant indicators of compromise can be found in Group-IB’s latest blog post.
A new macOS Trojan-Proxy is riding on cracked versions of legitimate software; it relies on DNS-over-HTTPS to obtain a C&C (command and control) address.
Illegally distributed software historically has served as a way to sneak malware onto victims’ devices. Oftentimes, users are not willing to pay for software tools they need, so they go searching the Web for a “free lunch”. They are an excellent target for cybercriminals who realize that an individual looking for a cracked app will be willing to download an installer from a questionable website and disable security on their machine, and so they will be fairly easy to trick into installing malware as well.
A family of malicious apps from developer Mobile apps Group are listed on Google Play and infected with Android/Trojan.HiddenAds.BTGTHB. In total, four apps are listed, and together they have amassed at least one million downloads.
Older versions of these apps have been detected in the past as different variants of Android/Trojan.HiddenAds. Yet, the developer is still on Google Play dispensing its latest HiddenAds malware.
Understanding banking Trojan techniques can help detect other activities of financially motivated threat groups.
We used our internal automated system for monitoring open-source repositories and discovered two other malicious Python packages in the PyPI.
Learn more about Dragos's discovery of an exploit introduced through password "cracking" software that targets industrial engineers and operators.