Russian authorities with the support of the security firm Group-IB dismantled the operations of the Cron gang that infected more than 1 million smartphones.

Russian authorities dismantled a major criminal ring that was targeting bank accounts by using an Android malware, dubbed ‘Cron,’ that compromised more than one million Android smartphones.

According to the Russian Interior Ministry, the criminal organization had stolen nearly $900,000 from bank accounts.

Law enforcement, assisted by the cyber security firm Group-IB have identified 25 members of the organization led by a 30-year-old living in the city of Ivanovo.

16 members of the gang were detained in November 2016, while the last active member was arrested in April.

The Cron Trojan was first spotted in March 2015, when the crime gang had been distributing the malware disguised as Viber and Google Play apps.

Early 2016, investigators discovered that an Android banking Trojan dubbed ‘Cron Bot’ was offered for rent in the criminal underground. According to the experts from the IBM X-Force the Cron Bot had been leased for between $4,000 and $7,000, depending on the configuration chosen by the buyer.

The Cron gang used spam SMS messages to spread the malware to individuals in Russia, the attackers used a very effective social engineering technique. The SMS messages informed recipients that their ads or photos had been shared on a website, and included links to a site that tricked victims into downloading and executing the malicious code.

“Spam SMS messages with a link to a website infected with the banking Trojan. The message was of the following form: “Your ad is posted on the website ….”, or “your photos are posted here.” After the user visits the compromised website, the malware will be downloaded on the device, tricking the victim to install it.” reads the report published by Group-IB.

“The victim could install the malicious program on the phone by downloading fake applications masked as legitimate ones. The Trojan is distributed under the guise of such applications as Navitel; Framaroot; Pornhub; Avito.“

Once the Cron Trojan infected a device, the malware could send SMS messages to any phone number, upload SMS messages received by the victim to C&C servers, and hide SMS messages coming from the bank. Using the features the malware can intercept 2FA messages sent to the users to authorize fraudulent transactions conducted by crooks.

The Cron gang earned approximately $900 000 USD (50 million rubles) with its activity.

“Every day Cron malware attempted to steal money from 50-60 clients of different banks. An average theft was about 8,000 rubles ($100). According to crime investigators, the total damage from Cron’s activity amounted to approximately $800 000 USD (50 million rubles). ” continues the report.

The investigators discovered the Cron Gang decided to extend its activity to other countries, they rented the Tiny.z banking Trojan for $2,000 per month.

Experts speculate the hackers had been planning on targeting France banking users because the Cron gang developed web injections for several of French banks, including Credit Agricole, Assurance Banque, Banque Populaire, BNP Paribas, Boursorama, Caisse d’Epargne, Societe Generale and LCL.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Cron Gang, cybercrime)

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