Now hackers con users with porn apps
10 Sep 2015
Hackers are using viruses masquerading as pornographic mobile apps as ''ransomware'' to extort money from users, whose devices are blocked until the ransom is paid.
While pornography has been in use for some time by hackers to install malware on devices, its use to extort a ransom from the user is a newer phenomenon.
US internet security firm Zscaler had published details about the android app ''Adult Player'', which lured victims to, what is assumed to be a pornographic video player on their device.
However, when the person started using the app, the virus searched for certain rights on the phone, in much the much same way that legitimate apps do.
The app would then determine whether the user had a forward facing camera and would take a picture of the person when they were using the app.
The person would then receive a ransom message on his phone telling them they had been detected looking at illegal material and that the device was being locked.
Even after the device was rebooted, the message would still remain on the screen and the only way to get rid of it was to pay the ''ransom'' of $500 via PayPal.
The Android app had tricked thousands of phone users into thinking they were about to watch X-rated videos when, in fact, they were having their pictures secretly snapped by hackers.
''There is no porn. The user gets duped, big-time,'' said Deepen Desai, director of security research at the US cyber-security firm Zscaler, which discovered the ruse late last month, New York Post reported.
The scheme was driven by pure greed, according to experts.
According to Desai such high-tech blackmail was typically referred to as ''ransomware'' - a lucrative form of cyber-crime that involved demanding money from people by threatening to wipe a computer device or release private information.
Incidents involving ransomware had rise by 127 per cent since 2004, according to experts.
Adult Player was the second app that Desai's company had found that lured victims with porn.
''In both cases, the tactic was the same: Porn was used as a lure and required the user to trust third-party apps that weren't vetted in an app store,'' he said.
Desai warned that people who had downloaded Adult Player should reboot their phone into ''safe mode,'' which would give them access only to apps that originally came with the unit.
Recently over a million UK marriage-cheating hacking victims had been being targeted by predatory blackmailers in the now-notorious Ashley Madison hacking case. (See: Ashley Madison hack: over 1 mn Brits get blackmail threats).
