Who Wrote the Pincer Android Trojan?
Summary: Krebs on Security traced the Pincer Android Trojan to Yuri Shmakov, a 32-year-old developer at Arello-Mobile in Novosibirsk, Russia, after F-Secure found his nickname 'senneco' embedded in the code. Shmakov confirmed he wrote the app as a freelance project for a client using the address alexbort@hush.com, who later wrote to Krebs saying he personally redesigned the source code into malware.
Why it matters: The Trojan was built to intercept and forward text messages, a capability F-Secure noted has been used in banking Trojans to defeat two-factor authentication, and it checked for virtual environments to frustrate analysis. The developer suspected the client's intent before finishing the job, which is the gap a security leader has to plan for: the code arrives signed, functional, and already inside the perimeter.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
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