All these days, we have seen email phishing attacks where cyber crooks seen sending malicious links through emails to trap online victims. But now, a North Korea-based hacking group dubbed Kumsong 121 was found using social media to attack smart phone users using Android platform.
EST Security related researchers recently uncovered a massive cyber attack campaign that was not only sophisticated but also proving highly successful in targeting victims.
It was discovered that Kumsong 121 was hitting android based smart phones to target and send an infected file over WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
After successfully hacking the account, the cyber crooks will then choose additional targets by choosing more targets from the social media friends of the victim.
Kumsong 121 is found to be funded by North Korea Intelligence and has so far targeted over 1400 individuals through their social media profiles laced with smishing links.
What’s interesting about this group is that it only attacks android based smart phones and not the iOS loaded Apple iPhones. But the bad news is that it targets victims with infected files that have the potential to access and transmit data such as text messages, address books, phone records, location data, sound recordings and videos and pictures save on the device to remote servers.
EST Security Response Centre was the first to detect the newly found hacking group from the Kim Jong UN led nation and found that the malware campaign has already targeted devices operating in South Korea, UK, and some parts of North Korea where some high-profile individuals working for the government sector of North Korea were targeted.
