Russian Cyber Gang Arrested By …. Russia
The Russian Interior Ministry has announced the arrest of 20 individuals from a major cybercriminal gang that had stolen nearly $900,000 from bank accounts after infecting over one million Android smartphones with a mobile Trojan called "CronBot."
Russian Interior Ministry representative Rina Wolf said the arrests were part of a joint effort with Russian IT security firm Group-IB that assisted the massive investigation.
The collaboration resulted in the arrest of 16 members of the Cron group in November 2016, while the last active members were apprehended in April 2017, all living in the Russian regions of Ivanovo, Moscow, Rostov, Chelyabinsk, and Yaroslavl and the Republic of Mari El.
The Cron malware gang abused the popularity of SMS-banking services and distributed the malware onto victims' Android devices by setting up apps designed to mimic banks' official apps. The gang even inserted the malware into fake mobile apps for popular pornography websites, such as PornHub.
Once victims downloaded and installed these fake apps on their devices, the apps added itself to the auto-start and the malware hidden inside them granted the hackers the ability to phish victims’ banking credentials and intercept SMS messages containing confirmation codes sent by the bank to verify the transactions.
"After installation, the program added itself to the auto-start and could send SMS messages to the phone numbers indicated by the criminals, upload SMS messages received by the victim to C&C servers, and hide SMS messages coming from the bank," writes Group-IB.
"The approach was rather simple: after a victim’s phone got infected, the Trojan could automatically transfer money from the user’s bank account to accounts controlled by the intruders. To successfully withdraw stolen money, the hackers opened more than 6 thousand bank accounts."
The gang usually sent text messages to the banks initiating a transfer of up to $120 to one of their 6,000 bank accounts the group set up to receive the fraudulent payments.
On April 1, 2016, the gang advertised its Android banking Trojan, dubbed "Cron Bot," on a Russian-speaking forum, giving the Group-IB researchers and Russian authorities a clue to their investigation into the group's operation.
After targeting customers of the Bank in Russia, where they were living in, the Cron gang planned to expand its operation by targeting customers of banks in various countries, including the US, the UK, Germany, France, Turkey, Singapore, and Australia.
During the raids, the authorities seized computer equipment, bank cards, and SIM cards associated with the criminal gang.
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