Experts at PC security company, Kaspersky have enjoined Internet users to refrain from downloading and installing the WhatsApp for Computers app. According to the analysts, the app is a banking malware that was created by Brazilian cyber crooks.
Delivered through an email delivery campaign, users were informed that the popular multimedia messaging app, WhatsApp was now on PC. They were then encouraged to download it as their friends were already waiting for them to accept their invitations.
After clicking the download link, users are taken through several redirections before downloading the software which is a downloader Trojan with various anti-debugging features.
It is this malware that finally downloads the banking Trojan, which still has a terrible AV detection rate.
According to Kaspersky lab’s expert Dmitry Bestuzhev, the malware can be clearly identified as Brazilian and works by sending stolen data in the Oracle DB format.
He said: “Once running, the malware reports itself to the cybercriminals’ infections statistics console and when open, a local port 1157 sends stolen information in the Oracle DB format. In addition, it downloads new malware into the system; some samples are 10Mb in size,” he says. “This is the classic style of a Brazilian-created malware.”
