Android: When you receive this SMS, do not click anyway!

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By Remi Lou on

A mass text message in recent weeks seeks to urge you to update Google Chrome. Problem: This is dangerous malware that seeks to drain your bank account.

If you recently updated the Google Chrome app on your Android smartphone, you may be under threat. As the Pradeo team informs us, malware posing as Google's mobile browser is spreading very quickly on Android. If we do not yet know the exact figures of infected people, Pradeo claims that this malware could already have infected “hundreds of thousands of people” in recent weeks.

It all starts with an SMS

As Pradeo reports, this malware is spread by SMS. You may have already received a message of this type recently, since it is the technique used by many scams, such as this dangerous threat. The process is practically identical: you receive an SMS informing you of the delivery of a package. In this time of health crisis where a number of us are ordering more online, this vicious method has a good chance of bearing fruit if, indeed, you are really expecting a package at the time of receipt of the message.

In this SMS, you are invited to click on a link to unblock the delivery. This is where things get tricky. This link first takes you to a page prompting you to update your Chrome application to continue the procedure. The problem is that this so-called update is nothing but malware copying the official Google application. Then, as soon as you enter your bank information in order to pay a small sum to unlock the delivery (1 or 2 euros, generally), hackers will have access to it and will be able to take pleasure in emptying your account, down to the smallest penny.

The malware sends 2,000 text messages per week without your knowledge

Pradeo researchers, who made this discovery, call this malicious campaign a Smishing Trojan. Worse still: the more malware infects smartphones, the faster it is able to spread. The fake Chrome application installed during this process would indeed be able to send up to 2,000 text messages without the knowledge of the owner of the infected smartphone.

Thanks to this mechanism, as perverse as it is ingenious, the malware spreads at breakneck speed. This is why, even if your bank account has not yet been emptied, we advise you to take a look in your settings to verify that no duplicate Google Chrome is there, especially if it displays a package name that has absolutely nothing to do with that of the real browser for Android.

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