Attackers are impersonating the Canadian government’s COVID-19 contact tracing app which is yet to be released for public.
Governments around the world have been taking measures to combat the Coronavirus. One tactic involved is the use of contact tracing apps to help track down individuals who may have been in contact with a victim of the virus, therefore being at risk themselves.
One such country happens to be Canada who recently announced the release of an app named “COVID Alert” which will be available to Canadians countrywide in just over a month’s time.
See: Chinese COVID-19 detection firm hacked; source code sold on dark web
However, attackers haven’t waited and have already started an impersonation campaign by releasing a fake Android app that claims to be from Health Canada but in actuality is a devious piece of malware leading to ransomware infection.
This reminds us of a recent report in which hackers were caught impersonating fake government-issued COVID-19 contact tracing apps to spread spyware.
As discovered by researchers from ESET, the attackers were offering the app’s APK through two domain names, namely tracershield[.]ca and covid19tracer[.]ca, both of which are not active now.
The campaign works in such a way that once the user installs the application, it leads to ransomware named CryCry ..
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