Pornhub App May Brick Your Phone
Posted by: Timothy Weaver on 02/22/2017 11:57 AM
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Thinking about downloading Pornhubs official app to your smartphone? You won't find it in Google's Play Store.
Researchers from cybersecurity professionals at ESET are advising you be careful as hackers are creating fake PornHub apps that look legit.
NextWeb is also reporting the scam in that once you download the fake app, it will ask that you run a virus check. Unfortunately, the "virus scan" is a sham and it actually infects the user with ransomware. The ransomware turns your device into a brick and will cost you $100 in bitcoins to restore it.
"File-encrypting crypto-ransomware is extremely popular among malware writers and there are many different families of Windows Filecoders (the ESET detection name for the category)," explained ESET.
"Many of them have jumped on to the ransomware bandwagon, hoping to copy the success of Cryptolocker and the like, but our technical analyses of all those families has shown that many of them are implemented poorly."
"For users, this means two things: Firstly, that even if they do pay up, their files may not get decrypted. Secondly, that it may be possible to decrypt their files without paying."
"As far as ransomware on Android is concerned, we have seen several variants where the code for decrypting files or uninstalling the lock-screen was missing altogether, so paying would not have solved anything."
The best advice is to avoid the app in the first place.
Source: Mirror.co
Researchers from cybersecurity professionals at ESET are advising you be careful as hackers are creating fake PornHub apps that look legit. NextWeb is also reporting the scam in that once you download the fake app, it will ask that you run a virus check. Unfortunately, the "virus scan" is a sham and it actually infects the user with ransomware. The ransomware turns your device into a brick and will cost you $100 in bitcoins to restore it.
"File-encrypting crypto-ransomware is extremely popular among malware writers and there are many different families of Windows Filecoders (the ESET detection name for the category)," explained ESET.
"Many of them have jumped on to the ransomware bandwagon, hoping to copy the success of Cryptolocker and the like, but our technical analyses of all those families has shown that many of them are implemented poorly."
"For users, this means two things: Firstly, that even if they do pay up, their files may not get decrypted. Secondly, that it may be possible to decrypt their files without paying."
"As far as ransomware on Android is concerned, we have seen several variants where the code for decrypting files or uninstalling the lock-screen was missing altogether, so paying would not have solved anything."
The best advice is to avoid the app in the first place.
Source: Mirror.co
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