Alert! This malware in disguise can take away all the money using your Android phone

The notorious Android malware BRATA is back in a new avatar. While several variants of the Android malware family BRATA were uncovered last year, cyber security firm Cleafy now found a new variant that can steal money from bank apps and wipe out data from Android devices.

What is BRATA, how does it work

Its origin- BRATA commonly termed as Brazilian Remote Access Tool Android showed up in Brazil at the end of 2018. Over the course, it spread to other regions. Some BRATA-based apps showed up on the Google Play Store last year which were later removed. Now as per the latest report, the banking trojan is said to be able to remotely access a user’s Android device and steal their money via banking apps. On successful bypass, it allows attackers to remotely factory reset an Android smartphone following malicious activities.

The security firm even noted BRATA’s new variant to be able to track GPS and keylogging which means, it can track the user’s location and even access data based on their activity on the device. The research report also reveals fake login pages deployment onto a user’s device via BRATA. The program infects apps thereby giving a free hand to take granular control of the device by abusing accessibility services.

As mentioned by McAfee, because “BRATA is distributed mainly on Google Play, it allows bad actors to lure victims into installing these malicious apps pretending that there is a security issue on the victim’s device and asking to install a malicious app to fix the problem.”

Notably, researchers at Cleafy discovered the new BRATA variant in November last year that targeted users in Italy, Poland, the United Kingdom, and Latin America.

As per reports, threat actors in the past managed to publish several apps in Google Play, ‘most of them reaching between one thousand to five thousand installs.’ The exact number of users impacted by BRATA this time isn’t known, but to protect against malicious malware, Android users are advised to download apps from authentic sources and opt for reliable anti-malware apps to save against potential threats.

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