A few months ago, the largest U.S. pipeline operator, Colonial Pipeline, was forced to halt operations for nearly a week due to a ransomware attack. While it ultimately didn’t stop consumers from buying gasoline, the incident forced the company to pay $4.4 million in ransom payment and illustrated just how vulnerable energy organizations are to cyberattacks.
Security researchers at the Lookout Threat Lab have identified a new rooting malware distributed on Google Play and prominent third-party stores such as the Amazon Appstore and the Samsung Galaxy Store. We named the malware “AbstractEmu” after its use of code abstraction and anti-emulation checks to avoid running while under analysis. A total of 19 related applications were uncovered, seven of which contain rooting functionality, including one on Play that had more than 10,000 downloads.
I realized early on that if I didn’t teach my kids how to identify and avoid likely attacks on their laptops and phones, that no one would. Nevertheless, when I see an opportunity for a “teachable security moment” I grab it, and last week this mobile phishes appeared on my phone. I captured a screen shot to share with my children and we played a little “spot the phish” game, where they would point out all the things that made this text suspicious.
