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Trojan Malware Utilizes Android Smart-Phones for Attacking Routers


One fresh Trojan virus designed for Android phones strikes routers that regulate victims' wireless networks thereby facilitating more cyber assaults, data theft and fraud against the victims. The Trojan, which is called Switcher, exploits gullible users of Android smart-phones by utilizing their devices for diverting the entire traffic flowing to and fro the WiFi connected phones forming a network over to the attackers.

According to security researchers from Kaspersky Lab, the incident represents the
foremost case of an Android malware utilized to strike routers in the manner described. The malware makes the effort for getting into the administrative interface of the router via utilizing overtly lengthy and already specified combinations of logins and passwords. The same job becomes simpler in case the router continues to have default credentials that are easy to crack.

Switcher gains admission into network routers via brute force attacks and subsequently alters the DNS configurations of the routers for diverting the devices' traffic onto one malicious DNS server. Such a harmful server tricks the devices in a way that they would interact with online sites that the attackers control, thus exposing the end-users to either more malware-based assaults or phishing assaults.

It is said that router attackers have managed to effectively hack 1,280 WiFi networks, chiefly within China. They employ the same tactics like those that one DNS Changer sample employed and which Proof Point the security company spotted in December 2015. The DNS Changer variant proliferated via JavaScript code within malverts, different from Switcher's technique of assault.

Actually, router assaults utilize one modified URL and take the guise of certain mobile client associated with Baidu a popular search engine of China. On the other hand, the DNS Changer attack relies on one phony edition of certain widely used mobile app from China that shares information among users regarding WiFi networks. The Trojan infection disseminates through end-users pulling down either of the versions of Switcher from the attackers-created website. Theregister.co.uk posted this online dated January 3, 2017.

For remaining safe from the Switcher Trojan assaults, users require resetting their network routers' default password and login details.

» SPAMfighter News - 1/9/2017

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