Android Trojan Flubot is no longer a threat

Have you never heard of Flubot and have you never suffered any financial damage with your bank or cryptocurrency accounts for which a Trojan was responsible? That’s good. Nevertheless, you should have at least heard about the campaigns with which the criminal authors have distributed Flubot quite successfully since December 2020. The good old package scam They mainly sent phishing messages via SMS, also called smishing. The classics were short messages about non-existent packages and fake voice messages. In order to be able to follow the alleged broadcast or listen to the alleged message, for example, users should be made to click on a link in the SMS, install an application and even grant permissions. Whoever did this opened the floodgates for Flubot: the malware then tried to steal access data for bank and cryptocurrency accounts and spread further via the contacts in the address book. Of course, Flubot does not mean Flubot Flubot disguises itself on the smartphone as any other app and is therefore difficult to identify. If you suspect something, you should tap on the app in question and try to uninstall it, Europol advises. If the app does not open and an error message is displayed during the uninstall attempt, it may be malware. The only way to get rid of them: reset the phone to factory settings. Even if Flubot is now frozen: the end of smishing is unlikely to mean that. Criminals will continue to try to hunt down smartphone users and users by SMS data and to cheer malware. Tapping on the left is forbidden, but with a few but important principles you can protect yourself. As with e-mails, the same applies to SMS: Do not tap any links in messages that you did not expect, that come from unknown senders and that create pressure to act or arouse curiosity. Better to delete the message right away. And especially in the context of dubious e-mails or short messages, the following applies: If the phone asks whether an app may be installed, under no circumstances confirm it, the police Crime prevention of the Länder and the federal government warns.