Android Trojan said to be stealing money from PayPal accounts even with 2FA enabled

A new report from security researchers suggests a new trojan preying on Android users. It is first detected by ESET in November 2018, the malware combines the capabilities of a remotely controlled banking Trojan with a novel misuse of Android Accessibility services, to target users of the official PayPal app. Once it is launched, the malicious app terminates without offering any functionality and hides its icon. The malware’s first function is stealing money from its victims; PayPal account holders. However, it requires the activation of a malicious Accessibility service. This request is presented to the user as being from the innocuous-sounding “Enable statistics” service. If the official PayPal app is installed on the compromised device, the malware displays a notification alert prompting the user to launch it. Once the user opens the PayPal app and logs in, the malicious accessibility service becomes active and mimics the user’s clicks to send money to the attacker’s PayPal address. The whole process takes about 5 seconds, and for an unsuspecting user, there is no feasible way to intervene in time. Since the malware does not rely on stealing PayPal login credentials, it instead waits for users to log into the official PayPal app themselves, it also bypasses PayPal’s two-factor authentication (2FA). The ...

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