Spoofing legitimate mobile applications is a common cybercriminal modus that banks on their popularity and relies on their users’ trust to steal information or deliver payloads. Cybercriminals typically use third-party app marketplaces to distribute their malicious apps, but in operations such as the ones that distributed CPUMINER, BankBot, and MilkyDoor, they would try to get their apps published on Google Play or App Store. We’ve also seen others take a more subtle approach that involves SmiShing to direct potential victims to malicious pages. Case in point: a campaign we recently observed that uses SMS as an entry point to deliver an information stealer we called FakeSpy (Trend Micro detects this threat ANDROIDOS_FAKESPY.HRX).

FakeSpy is capable of stealing text messages, as well as account information, contacts, and call records stored in the infected device. FakeSpy can also serve as a vector for a banking trojan (ANDROIDOS_LOADGFISH.HRX). While the malware is currently limited to infecting Japanese and Korean-speaking users, we won’t be surprised if it expands its reach given the way FakeSpy’s authors actively fine-tune the malware’s configurations.