A type of Android malware known as FluBot has been spreading through multiple European countries and may soon land on smartphones in the United States, security researchers warn.
The operators behind FluBot initially targeted devices in Spain, which made up the majority of attacks when the malware was detected late last year. Now, its campaigns have expanded to affect Android phones in the United Kingdom, Germany, Hungary, Italy, and Poland, Proofpoint researchers learned through the company's own data and open source intelligence.
FluBot's English-language campaign, which has almost entirely targeted phones in the UK, has used more than 700 unique domains. The UK campaign started with messages from Germany; these were quickly replaced with messages from UK senders. The German-language messages were turned off once the UK messages were established, indicating a conscious effort to spread FluBot from country to country. Soon, researchers believe it may spread to the US as well.
"Currently, Proofpoint has seen German and English-language SMS messages being sent to US users from Europe, which may be the result of the malware sending to everyone on the infected devices' contact lists," says Sherrod DeGrippo, senior director of threat research and detection at Proofpoint. This is similar to how FluBot began to spread in the UK, she adds, and given it already supports English, adding US to the list of targets wouldn't be hard for attackers.
That said, researchers aren't yet seeing a concerted effort to target US phones as they're currently seeing in the UK.
A FluBot infection starts with the victim receiving an SMS message impersonating a delivery service; for example, FedEx, DHL, and Correos. The messages vary, ..
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