«Get 2 Months of Netflix Premium for free«. Thus begins a WhatsApp message that comes from a contact and ends with an installed application posing as Netflix and taking control of your data.
The malware always lurks in some of its variants and the latest malicious application that has affected Android smartphone users is called FlixOnline, posing as a clone of Netflix, the streaming and on-demand content service.
The security firm Check Point Research has warned of this application, which took advantage of the abuse of permissions to spread massively through WhatsApp messages, promising free access to the entire catalog of Netflix series and movies.
FlixOnline, the fake Netflix that spreads malware
The messages were spread by WhatsApp in this style:
- «Get 2 Months of Netflix Premium free anywhere in the world for 60 days. Get it now HERE + LINK ».
- “2 months of Netflix Premium free at no cost FOR QUARANTINE REASON (CORONA VIRUS) * Get 2 months of Netflix Premium free anywhere in the world for 60 days.”
The FlixOnline application, already withdrawn from Google Play, used to gain access to device permissions to overlap with other applications and steal data such as login information, it could ignore the battery saving modes to prevent the system from closing the application in background and accessed to read and write application notifications.
Thus, the application could automatically reply to messages received by WhatsApp and continue with the chain of propagation of the malware.
By following the links, users again came to websites that posed as Netflix, imitating its design and inviting registration to enter sensitive data and payment methods.
For some reason, FlixOnline has remained 2 months available for download from Google Play until the researchers at Check Point Research have detected it and reported it to Google for its removal from the official store. In spite of everything, it has been downloaded hundreds of times during these weeks and they indicate that it would not be unusual for this method to be replicated with other services.
Of course, the best weapon against this type of attack is common sense, and we should never trust messages of that style, suspicious and with hidden links, and much less enter our data without being clear about what we are doing, no matter how much they are messages. that come from trusted contacts.
The entry No one will give you Netflix for free: beware of this malware on Android, it appears first in The Free Android.
